Tag Archives: tuff shed

I See By Your Outfit

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While perusing some of the photos that were originally on the now defunct *The Institutes hard drives this image popped up. It was familiar looking as if the rider atop his magnificent steed was known, perhaps a famous cowboy from the 60’s or 70’s. Was he in one of those westerns that were so prevalent back then? “Breakheart Pass” maybe or “The Cowboys”, surely not “The Wild Bunch”. The longer we viewed the image the more curious we became. The only clue we had was a cryptic note written in a firm but shaky hand that could have been written while horseback that said “Cattle Drive May 1973”. Could that have been the origin of this picture. After all that was 45 years ago, a time that will live in infamy. Another clue was the fact that the horse who was apparently named “WhoaBoy” had very short legs. They barely reached the ground, the herding dog, a corgi named “WatchIt! I’m walking here!” had longer legs. The mystery deepened.

We had to get to the bottom of this mystery to find out the secret of the cowboy, “Could it be done?” we asked ourselves. We went into the tuff shed where we had stored many of the records and old machinery and scratched off lotto tickets and other secret stuff from our long time association with The Institute, and found the Rolodex that contained all the names and addresses, dress sizes, cigarette preferences, land line numbers, (see Wikipedia for information on what a land line was) food allergies, relevant status, gender, personal info, shoe sizes, whether they were inked or not, (interesting side note here. Inked meaning Tattooed.  Rarely anyone had a tattoo then, only hookers, some ex-military guys, people who had been in Russian prisons, and Alice What’s her name who had one in the coolest place, but that was it, you just never saw it, oh yeah Biker Bitches, they had them.) hopefully containing the one name that might help us in finding out more about this image.

There it was, the name and home number of one of our secret benefactors and researchers, Mr. Peabody, inventor of the pretty much forgotten WayBack machine. What’s more the start code for his WayBack machine was there too. And almost beyond belief was the very machine itself. Forgotten, stacked behind The Institutes collection of old National Geographic magazines, which are going to be worth a goldmine someday, but still workable as there were still glowing lights on the main GoBack panel. What a coincidence.

Mr. Peabody himself hasn’t been seen since Nixon and the Watergate thing happened but as he’d left the operating manual and full Power of Attorney to us to use the machine any way we deemed necessary, but only for good you understand, we hired a couple of burly college kids to haul the 4800 lb. machine out to where we could run an extension cord from the garage. Luckily we had a 20 amp wall plug-in our new quarters, so we would have plenty of power to get back to 1973 but more importantly to get back to today. Who wants to be stuck back in the 70’s, right?

One of the college kids, a burly but inquisitive youth named Todd, wanted to know what it was like to time travel, to go way back. In trying to describe the effect to him it became apparent to us that this WayBack machine, as handy as it was, had not been used or tested for a very long time. Like years. So we casually asked Todd if he would like to experience time travel himself. HIs answer was an enthusiastic “Yeah, but I got to be back for a math quiz this afternoon.” We assured him there was “No sweat. Time doesn’t count when you’re way back. It’ll seem like you didn’t even go.” We weren’t totally positive about that theory but it kind of made sense. So we quickly looked thru the manual one more time and did the check list countdown.

Sit in chair with back straight. Check.   Fasten seat belt. Check.   Do Not bring any food or drinks on trip. Check.   Keep all hands and feet and other extremities inside the launch area. Check.  Keep tray tables in their upright and locked position. Check.   Fill in time to go to and when to come back on GoBack panel. Check.   Hit button ,Yell Sayonara. Check.

Here’s where stuff kind of went off the rails. Todd the big lummox, kind of sprawled out to be more comfortable and sort of inadvertently stuck his foot out past the launch area and as soon as that big flash of light struck he was gone. Except for his foot. That big size 14 Birkenstock was still there filled with his foot up to the middle of his skull tattoo on his calf. The cut was surgically clean, no blood no gore, the cross-section as smooth as a piece of plastic. The toenails unclipped. It was Todd’s foot. His buddy, Evan, yelled something and came racing over to the WayBack machine and tripping over the extension cord yanked it out of the wall. There was a not good sounding electrical noise emitting from the GoBack panel and the machine went dark.

In looking through the operating manual under Trouble shooting Your WayBack machine there was a warning box that emphatically stated “Never Ever unplug the WayBack machine while in use. We mean it. Don’t do it.” It filled half the page. It went on to state if this happens the following parts must be replaced or retrieval of the traveler will be cancelled. Then there was a list of the parts needed. All would be readily available at your neighborhood RadioShack. We breathed a sigh of relief until someone mentioned “Didn’t they go out of business?” and it was like OMG! No freaking parts! Todd’s like almost legless stranded in the 70’s and we’re like S O L in doing anything to get him back. It was a dark moment when the implications began to set in.

This was bad, this was really bad. Evan was freaking out and was becoming totally  unglued until we told him “Hey, it was you that unplugged the machine. Everything would have been cool if you weren’t so clumsy. You’re the one probably going to the slammer so quit your whining.” Thinking it over he decided that probably Todd would get some good care there, right? and wasn’t that the time when you had all those drugs and free sex.” We said we weren’t sure as our memories of those times were a little hazy but that sounded about right. He then decided that he would just go then, he had some homework to do or something. But not before we made him shove the WayBack machine back into the Tuff shed and restack all those National Geographic’s around it.

That left us with the fact that we had no way now to learn anything more about the handsome but young and virile looking cowboy in the image above. But given all the hassle and crap that we just went through we decided to hell with it. It wasn’t that big a deal. It was probably just some dummy that wanted everybody to think he was a cowboy, when in fact he wasn’t. Not even close. End of story.

But wait! What about Todd’s foot? Thinking that someday RadioShack would make a comeback and we’d be able to get those needed parts, and retrieve old legless Todd, we packed it in dry ice in an old cooler and threw it back there where the now useless WayBack machine was stored to be dealt with at another time. So we guess it’s just a case of all’s well that ends well. Just out of curiosity does anyone who reads this have a grandfather named Todd, that tells weird stories about time travel and the seventies? If so it’s probably just crazy talk. Ignore it.

* 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 regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

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Woe !  Despair !  Agony On Me !

“Where has the blog gone?” you say. “What’s happened? Have they found you?” is another question we get. “Is The Institute under siege?” No nothing so dramatic but that doesn’t mean we don’t have dramatic crap happening around here, because we do. Lots of it, and it’s the really dramatic kind too.

It’s computer trouble. How many times do you hear that now days? “We’re sorry but our computer system is down and we can’t you the results of your brain transplant until our tech gets here and he’s helping the folks at Burger Bloat get their system back online. They’ve got big trouble over there with people demanding their Giant eleven pound AchyBurger and Soggy Fries. We should have your results in the very near future, Sorry for any inconvenience.”

As you know if you know anything at all about The Institute, is that we try to keep our computer room rat-free. This has always been paramount to the running of our Cray computer system, the fastest, largest super-computer system in the English-speaking world, and we’ve been moderately successful given that our Cray computer is set up in a Tuff Shed so the heat it gives off doesn’t burn down the main building. We’d really be in a pickle if that happened, and as we were in a hurry to get it set up we decided against pouring a slab under the building and chose to set it on the bare ground instead. This was a time saving decision because we wanted to get it plugged in so we could get email and stuff. We see now in hindsight that it would have been better to pour the slab, as those pesky rats can burrow like some kind of demented badger, but it easy to throw stones now. It seemed like a good idea when we did it.

Unfortunately the Cray is where we store all of our images on those new little 3.5 floppy disks that are so handy. Well to cut to the chase here and save you some valuable time, some kind of Super Rat or maybe even a bunch of them found that the cables leading into the Cray tasted just like chicken and during this last snowstorm chewed through many of them and even ate some of the capacitors we hard wired into the cable for extra power. Well that tore it. Now we are scrambling like one of those monkeys with his football to try and salvage what we can. It looks like we are going to be able to save all of them (we hope) and will be back on the air, or I mean the page soon.

We are hoping that the government, that would be our government, seeing our distress would step in and provide us with one of their cast off NSA computers that they just throw in the dumpster if they get too many of them, suitably erased of all secret stuff of course, so we could get back to providing you with all the news and exposes, and events of little importance that you’ve come to depend on. So far they turned a deaf ear to our pleas. Perhaps if you wrote your representative a long letter asking them to intercede on our behalf they would show us some mercy and get us a computer muy pronto. But it would take all of you with some of you even writing two, or maybe several hundred letters to get their attention. So if you’re not doing anything right now, sit down and write like a crazy person. It may help, or it may get you on one of those lists the government keeps, we don’t know, but the effort counts. Thanks in advance for your support and we hope to be back up and running like the well oiled juggernaut of information you’ve come to love.

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.