Mr. Daily and the Fish

Mr. Daily is a coworker at my engineering office, he is an interesting fellow.

He loves to use the phrase 'However, comma...' to start a statement in counterpoint to someone's idea, I'm not saying that he immediately jumps in to suggest a better alternative or tear down someone's concept, but it's just an odd phrase to use.

Quite a while back the administrative manager called him Mr. Weeks as he was walking through the front entry to go to the bathroom or something, she enjoys making up other time related alternatives to his name. His retort was his name ('daily') being mentioned in the Lord's Prayer. He was referring to 'oh lord, please bless us our daily bread...', I heard all of this because I was set up in the conference room off the front entry QC-ing some plans, I said 'we think pretty highly of ourselves don't we Mr. Daily (using his first name).' To which he responded with a slightly embarrassed chuckle and hitched up his khakis then adjusted them back down and walked off. The admin laughed 'that was pretty good!'

We have a toy fish that is passed around to different people when someone gets all bent out of shape on something. Mr. Daily gets the fish all of the time as a result of his tendency to fly off the handle, so he always ends up with the fish. For 2008, he was letting his hair and beard grow out and towards the end of the year he’d taken to tying his hair into a small pony tail. This was noted by many and more importantly by the guys that enjoy setting Mr. Daily off and giving the fish back to him. The decided to memorialize the pony tail by adding a pony tail to the fish. See the picture below.

Table Ideas

I need a new table badly, something longer, bigger that can seat more people. I've been looking a little bit. Money is kinda tight so all the deal emails from World Market are sometimes enticing.

This table is interesting, looks nice and big. Cost - $529 - not too bad.










I've been to the Rebuilding Center here in Portland and they have a table that is gorgeous. It's constructed of reclaimed wood from deconstructed homes nearby. Good place to start, to get some ideas. This one is cost prohibitive at $1700! It is for a good cause though - supporting the Rebuilding Center and their programs.
I'd get the 72" table, the one shown here is probably 12'.



My dad is going to have some free time very soon and a new project is a opportunity to buy some new tools in his mind so I went to the library and got a set of plans for a trestle table that looks really nice. Cost unknown at this point.

A Little More Snow In PDX

We got some more snow starting some time today, it will probably melt off. We had snow about 2-weeks ago. Here are some pictures.
Today.












2-weeks ago.

Book Report

I recently read this book and really enjoyed it. It is both about a small country in Africa and an Englishman named Basil Seal. Basil is the main character in many of Evelyn Waugh's books, he is sort of a worldly bon vivant that has fallen into a the position of High Commissioner& Comptroller of the Ministry of Modernisation and being helped by an Armenian named Krikor Youkoumian. They came up with strange new laws and policies that the backward country was not prepared for. This was such a funny book, I was reading it on the Max about Youkoumian who was able to find Basil at the train station and got him a seat on the train by moving his wife to the livestock car and giving her a jar of cherries, I laughed out loud at that.

Modernisation eventually became too much for Basil, the Emperor had attended Oxford where he had briefly met Basil, and was prone to thinking up new ways to modernize his country. Everyday it was something new for Basil to try to figure out how to write a new policy/law, from statewide morning exercises and community singing to a ill conceived birth control pageant. The final straw was when the Emperor started printing his own money and his uncle who had been chained in a cave was 'resurrected' and made Emperor.

Go purple!

Reclaimed water is a new source of non-potable water that many water suppliers are offering to some users in both areas that typically experience water shortages (Contra Costa County) and those that typically wouldn't like in Happy Valley (OR). I think this is a great idea, it reduces the amount of effluent water typically sent to a river or other receiving water body, provides water that's non-potable (not drinkable) to users that don't need potable water such as: golf courses, construction sites, heating/cooling facilities, and other manufacturing processes. I'm not sure how clean (what level of treatment) the water has to be for use food crop production or livestock, I think those regulations are still being developed.

Here is the purple pipe developers are required to use. Notice the warning on the side. -I lost the photo somewhere, but it is purple/pink pipe with "CAUTION - RECLAIMED WATER" dot printed on the side. Found it!



Here is a standard hydrant installed by Contra Costa County, except this one has been modified with a 2 1/2 inch port versus the normal 3 inch connection for fire hoses. The County let's construction companies (typically) borrow a special meter assembly and they pay by calling in every month the amount of usage.

My version of the hydrant layout:


Other presentations on recycled water use.
http://www.watereuse.org/sections/california/northern-california/meeting/presentations