Tag Archives: PhD’s

Greenery

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There have been cards and letters arriving daily from readers all over the place, but mostly from those that are buttocks deep in snow and cold. Some have been angry. “Do something about this weather you ….. ” Some have been sad. “Please I beg of you change the weather, please” this one had actual tear drops on the email. Some have been depressed. “I’ve been on hold for two and a half hours. Don’t they man these suicide hotlines anymore. Are you going to do anything about this weather, ok nevermind. I’ll take care of it.” We tried to reach this individual right away but his line was busy. If you ever feel this strongly about the weather immediately move to Belize or maybe Costa Rica. It doesn’t snow there, ever. It’s always nice and they have monkeys.

The reason we get these letters is because we have a weather modification machine  that we can use to create desirable weather for those people we like, but unfortunately the Tuff Shed we store it in was damaged by a wind-driven snow storm and one of the unbreakable panels fell on the machine and broke the rare European 12AT7/ECC81 Vacuum tube that sat on the top of the machine. Of course it is critical to its function and we can not change any weather without it. RadioShack is out of them and is waiting on a backorder. Apparently there has been a run on these tubes as others who have weather modification machines in their garage or wherever have suffered damage to their machines as well. The tubes are made by a small family run company in Czechoslovakia which we understand has been split into two countries, Left Czechoslovakia and Right Czechoslovakia, so we don’t even know where to send them our order. We apologize for any inconvenience but this how modern commerce works today. Don’t blame us, blame “Just in Time Inventory control” we have nothing to do with that.

A few of us were sitting around the small compact nuclear reactor that we use to power many of The Institutes needs, just pressing the bottoms of our feet against its sides where it is the warmest and talking about being warm. That little dark-haired woman we call SK was acting silly and pressing her butt up against the sides of the reactor on a dare and the conversation turned to what it was like when you were a kid and wanted comforting.

One of the PhD’s who was putting ointment on a particularly bad burn on the soles of his feet, who is old but can still remember stuff, talked about how he liked to crawl into someone’s lap when he was younger, preferably a bigger woman like his mom or an aunt, or the neighbor lady who liked to come over just because she liked him crawling into her lap. It was back in the days before PC or political correctness became the law and you could say big, or heavy, or even fat if you knew the person real good and she didn’t get mad at you for saying it. He said he liked the warmth and softness of them and how he could wiggle until he felt just right and sometimes he would even fall asleep.

None of us thought he was too weird but then Ethan, the new intern that we use to change the fuel rods in the reactor, said he would like to get naked and squidgle down into the leaves in the picture above. Wrap up in them and feel how warm they were. The sun would make them feel like big soft green marshmallows and it would feel so good that maybe he just wouldn’t be able to stand it. We all thought that Ethan should have a  short break from fuel rod duty, maybe get in to the clinic to see what could be done about all of his hair loss. After he wandered off to find his lead-lined gloves we all talked about the green in the picture. How it seemed like you could fall into the green and just roll around on it. It had to be warm, like human skin warm, to get that green.

It certainly is not the same as summer but gathering around the heat source of your choice and looking at pictures that warm your soul if not your body seems like a good way to spend your long winter day. We’d write more but Ethan just jerked open the reactor door to change one of the fuel rods so we had to go out and wait in the hall for him to finish. It seems like it is taking him longer and longer to complete what should be a simple chore. OK then, Stay warm.

If you insist on knowing more about our weather modification program perhaps the following posts may help you.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/bad-weather-day/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/thors-revenge/

Road Trip

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Every once in a while we take a chance here at The Institute and do something really nice for our employees. This year we shut The Institute down completely for the entire holiday season, banked the fires, put the computers in standby, turned off the electricity to the fence, turned our livestock loose to fend for themselves, gave all of our interns a bus ticket to the last place they remember being from and The Institute went into hibernation until the New Year’s bells rang.

Now we are ramping up again. Everyone is slowly trickling back from where ever they spent the holidays. Just yesterday the bright, shiny, baby blue bus that the Sheriff’s department uses to transport prisoners hither and yon, hither being County road 56G where they cheerfully spread blacktop for the entire fortnight of the holidays, and yon, back to the tent city up near the Soapstone Wildlife Preserve where they ate sagebrush and tried not to freeze to death, dropped off the interns and two of our PhD’s that had spent the Christmas holidays in the bosom of the Larimer County Work but not release program.

Fortunately our critical employees like our chef returned a day early to get the fires built back up again. Of course he returned because we kept the back seat out of his 1968 Buick Boattail Riviera as an incentive to come back. You can not find replacements for those anywhere, I don’t care if you look on Craigslist, eBay, AutoZone, or any junkyard from here to the Philippines, they’re just not available. It’s good to see that coal-black smoke roiling out of the commissaries chimneys again. It won’t be long before the scent of coal fires and Lamprey stew and frozen dinners will coat the buildings with a thin layer of grease again. I know some of our interns cannot wait. Which is good because they’ve already chewed so much bark off the aspen I don’t know what the elk are going to eat this winter,

Our Chief of Security was also an early returnee. She had to put new brushes in the generator that keeps the fence electrified and to test fire the AR-15’s that were stored in the gun locker. Plus she just likes shooting stuff and it’s difficult to find a place where you can discharge automatic weapons with impunity. Our med staff came back because there would be a lot of cases to treat amongst the returning interns due to their living rough as they call it. Rashes, bites, broken teeth, infected tattoos, malnutrition, loss of key parts of their bodies from unknown incidents, bruises from manacles and restraints, loss of body hair from attending New Year’s parties, colds, hypo and hyper thermia, hearing loss from listening to Mother’s and other loved ones telling them to get a real job, acute disorientation, many terrible nearly untreatable diseases from those who traveled outside the country to their home of origin, and sea sickness. Our med staff is ready, in fact some of them were walking around with their rubber gloves on already.

Our animals got time off also. The wolves went up to Yellowstone to visit friends, the grizzlies that watch the far-flung perimeter of The Institute had reservations at Sandals again this year. They just can’t get enough of the Turks and Caicos, Saint Lucia and Antigua. Our resident Elk herd made the short pilgrimage to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the in-laws. Our own Bighorn Sheep herd went to visit cousins and other extended family down in the Black Mountains near Kingman Arizona. They’re a little late checking in but they were sighted on Highway 34 near Allenspark just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park where they were going to stop for a night to see friends and drop off a few Desert Bighorns who wanted to see the park first hand, or hoof as it were.

It’s always a good feeling to get The Institute back up and running. Soon we’ll be having our meetings, setting agendas and summer trips schedules, putting the interns back to work with planting and watering and hoeing. They’ll be getting that lower 160 acres planted to Rutabagas again and be busy stirring up the carp ponds. Fresh fish again, they like that. We here at The Institute hope your holidays went well and you’re back in the grind with a fresh mind and rested feet. Drop us a line when you’re not busy. Let us know how your holidays went. We’ve already heard from Aunt Pheeb. Uncle Skid got out of Rikers in time to make it home for Christmas. She didn’t even know he was in New York, he had just gone out for cigarettes, but that’s a story for another time. Have a good New Year.

Behind The Ridge

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Those of you who have visited The Institute know that there is more to it than the cluster of magnificent buildings housing some of the most high-tech equipment and knowledge on planet earth. You also know about some of the other activities we have in progress that require their own set of buildings, such as our world famous Observatory placed on the mountain top that overshadows and shelters The Institute.

And there is our world-famous weather modification program that is housed its own tuff shed because of the intricacy of the equipment needed, and the need to keep that equipment out of the weather. We use a lot of tuff sheds because we can get them from Home Depot and have them delivered right to the compound complex. They’re tuff enough for the modifications we make to them to handle things like the hook up for the incredible amount of electrical power needed to change the weather. We bring some of our power in from the outside world and have to use 36″ culverts for conduits which makes it heavy and difficult to connect. It takes three interns just to pick up the plug and stuff it in the socket installed in the side of the tuff shed. Plus if we have to unplug it the tuff shed walls can withstand the force of the pickup pulling on the plug to disconnect it. So we need to use tuff sheds for some of the larger installations. We’re dealing with 111,000 amps here with a three-prong plug nearly 8′ in diameter so a tuff shed is the only way to go.

We have the command center located in the middle of the Institute complex that we call the Big House, which is where our very own Director maintains his own living quarters so he can oversee the immense multiplicity of activities that take place here, and have the kind of living space that he has become famous for, and only the misuse of huge amounts of Institute funds can provide. We have the staff quarters where we house some of more lucid PhD’s, and the compound where Tent city is located to accommodate the many interns that come and go. We have the zoo, the 1.2563 million gallon aquarium, our own high country botanical center with specimens from around the world plus the new ones we have developed right here in-house. We have our own privately owned shock-collar wearing Wolf pack that patrols the property itself. It took nearly herculean effort to bury the power cable around the perimeter of The Institute so the collars would work and apply the necessary voltage to our canine friends to keep them from leaving the property, but not totally kill anyone who accidently wandered onto our property. But it was necessary to keep the pack contained. I mean one or two of the villagers kids go missing and there is a hell of a row. We just don’t have time for that.

We have our incredible data center where we have our very own Cray super computer that we purchased for pennies on the dollar from CSU when they were going to throw it out, if fact some of it was already in the dumpster and we had to dig it out.  Plus, not to mention the hundreds if not dozens of specially modified IBM 8086 floppy disk drive PC’s, daisy-chained together with usb cables and 4″ link log chain to produce another super computer, plus cut down on theft. They were modified because originally the 8086 IBM computer didn’t have a usb connector. We didn’t realize that many of our readers weren’t aware of that. We weren’t either when we purchased them. We just thought we got a good deal. But live and learn, fortunately our trained IT technicians were able to weld the proper usb connectors in place so we ‘re good to go now. The only other issue we’re dealing with is where to store all those millions of 5″ floppy disks that have been accumulating. We may have solved that problem already as our head IT person found storage in the magnetron building where we store all of our spare magnets. So our backups are secure now.

We could go on and on about the yacht harbor on the North Fork of the Cache La Poudre river, our helipad, the Bentley restoration garage, but The Institute is more than these shallow but very cool and desirable things that many of us could not live without. These items mentioned are just the trappings of a wildly successful Institute that brings in bales of money. The projects come and go like financial raindrops. Sometimes you have a torrential monsoon of wealth literally falling out of the sky, other times there is but a drizzle and we’re as broke as the Ten Commandments.

What we also have in abundance is the property itself, and that is what some people think is the most important part of our operation. The miles and miles of limited access wilderness that we oversee. If you have been following the blog for any time at all you know our property encompasses every thing from the driest deserts to the highest mountains and everything in between. Do you have any idea of how much razor wire it takes to fence a spread like this, lots, like really a lot. We have trains full of it pulling into our siding every day.

Recently we have acquired this new piece of property and had it shipped here with everything you see in the image above. The trees, the rocks, the fog, the light. It was simply going to waste in Arizona and because their state budget is strapped because of housing all of the illegal aliens and even some of those from other countries, plus the money it takes to keep that wall polished and in good repair, we were able to get this property at a tremendous discount. Plus all we have to do is let some of the guys in the city council down there come up here and hang out on it every so often and we can even defer the interest on the promissory note for it. I’m telling you, we made out like scalded cats on this deal.

There were some objections raised about the feasibility of moving another mountain here by some of those on our board of directors but after we made known our plans to bring back the Lamprey Surprise menu at the commissary and cut off their contact with the outside world, which meant no internet, no running down to the 7-11 for Slurpee’s, no conjugal visits, they changed their minds and welcomed the idea.

Plus we were able to shoehorn it in where we had that disastrous hazardous waste dump site that was so lucrative for us, until they stopped running a lot of those nuclear power plants and prohibited shipping those 55 gal. drums across state lines. Man did we take it in the shorts on that deal. Dealing with all those EPA guys and losing all those interns we sent down there to try and bury that stuff. That was about as much fun as a tornado in a trailer park.

Right now we haven’t exactly figured out how we’re going to monetize this property but there has to be an angle where we can produce some kind of revenue stream, even if it is only charging a rather expensive but excessive rescue operation for those city council guys that come up and want to use it. That’s some rough country down there before you even get to the hazardous waste dump place. Plus there’s some really deep areas, bottomless ravines and stuff, and cracks that go on for miles. So where we had some install problems fitting that property in there makes it a little dicey to navigate through. You don’t just casually drop a new mountain in place without having something not fit right. So there are places where if you go you might never be seen again, but that’s wilderness, Right?

Any way we thought you might enjoy being brought up to speed on some of the improvements happening here at The Institute. Stop in sometime, but make sure you call first. Seriously, call. Ever since the election started our security people are kind of jumpy. They don’t know what kind of  weirdo might be trying to get in and access our people, so they tend to be rather liberal with the use of those depleted plutonium bullets they carry. Just a warning, especially if you have an expensive comb-over. We’d like to see you but call first.

Sunday Meeting At The Institute

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Every Sunday here at The Institute we have our weekly meeting where all the staff gather in the main auditorium in the central building located at the center of our compound campus. There, all the PhD’s sit in the front row, nearest the fire, intent and alert, the interns squat sullenly on the rushes that line the center of the room and our regular household staff, the cooks, gardeners, drivers, x-ray technicians, security, animal management, astronomy techs, librarians, interpreters, masseuses, fire mitigation, Zumba instructors, the ninja night squad, chain link fence and razor wire repair people, ammunition loaders and Armory personnel, all those and more, shove their way into the standing room area. Often there are squabbles between the household staff and the interns who tire of squatting and try and stand in the back to stretch their legs. This is space jealously guarded and those who don’t wear the purple tunic are quickly but roughly pushed back into their own space. But usually there is little bloodshed.

The meeting is normally an opportunity for those who need to, to confess their sins and ask for leniency so their food rations don’t get cut. We have little tolerance for those who shirk their responsibilities. As the winter drags on food becomes an important part of their daily life here at The Institute so no one wants their gruel ticket taken away. The gruel ticket isn’t actually a real piece of paper they carry around to gain entrance to the cafeteria, it’s a chip that had been implanted in the loose skin over their right eyebrow that they use to gain entrance. A simple bowing motion to plant their face against the waist-high scanner and they’re admitted. Unless we turn them off for some reason. Then they can’t get in. Those are the ones you find scavenging around the edges of the cafeteria building kicking listlessly at the snow, hoping to finding something edible that one of infraction-less has dropped.

The main announcement today is a quiet reminder that soon the road leading into the compound campus will be covered with snow. This means that entry will be restricted or closed during the duration of the inclement weather. It also means snow tires for the vehicles that need them, oil for the Thiokol snowcat trail grooming machine, laying in extra fish and fish parts to feed the dogs if we have to use them to go down to the gate at the foot of the mountain for the mail. And also to keep them fat and healthy in case we have to eat them if things get tough up here.It’s a time to implement the plan to do everything necessary to make it though the winter. It’s a DefCon 4 type of plan except without all the missiles and everything. The interns that don’t qualify yet for residency in the intern dorms have to get their tents and the occasional teepee winterized. There is a lot of work to be done.

Today the meeting was quiet. There were very few who needed to bare their souls and so security could stand down. Our portable pillory wasn’t needed and for the most part everyone just stared at the image up on the Jumbotron. Those staffers that are still with us from previous winters knew what that peaceful bucolic snow scene really meant and it kept the crowd quiet as they reflected on the long lean months to come. The image above is a shot from last winter taken along the West entrance to The Institute. Perhaps you too should check to see if you need snow tires or fish parts. They say this one is going to be a rough one. Good luck.