Engineering as it used to be.–Part 3

Following on from Engineering as it used to be  - Part2, here is the next in the Saga. (Bloody hard work to remember that far back, believe you me). Anyhow, here goes.

The stage is set in the year of our Lord 1967, and the venue is Heathrow. I’d been driven there by my parents,  in their motorcar, (that’s what they were called in those days) and deposited at the terminal complete with two suitcases and hand luggage. My parents bid me a swift goodbye and departed in a cloud of smoke from the tyres on their motorcar. I always had the feeling that they’d been trying to get rid of me for many years. After all they had sent me to a prison camp boarding school, for three years.

Any way must get on.

In those days there were no wheels on suitcases and no trolleys in racks for the use of the fare paying passengers, so I lugged my bags to the check desk by sheer brute force and threw myself  at the mercy of the stewardess at the check in desk. A quick check of my passport and the issue of a boarding pass, (There was no “Did you pack your own cases in those days”. Mind you would you say, “My luggage was packed for me by a man in a dress sporting a bushy beard”, No.). Anyhoo, straight off to the departure lounge to await my aeroplane. After a short while we boarded the mighty bird of the skies. A Vickers vanguard turboprop.

To jump ahead after 26 hours of flight and stopovers we finally reached our destination. Singapore. After passing through immigration, cursory at best, as we still had significant influence on the island, we emerged into the heat and oh Fuck me, it was hot. Not only hot, it had a humidity that you could barely cut with a bread knife. I luckily was met by a crown agent who  informed me that the ship I was supposed to join had not actually arrived and he was going to put me up in a hotel for the next couple of nights.

My apologies for the lack of engineering so far. This bit just sets the tone of what it was like back in the dim and distant past.

Now comes the fun part, expenses were regulated, like a troughing MP would die for. The agent hands me 80 singapore dollars and tells me that it is to cover my hotel bill and expenses. Well in those days there were 8 dollars to the pound which equates to £5 per day. I was used to subsistence in the UK of less than £5 per week. Even better when I found that my hotel was only 5 dollars per night, and Tiger beer was  only 50 cents per pint. I’d truly found a job made in heaven. Or so I thought.

To be continued………………….Hell begins.

Russian air bag testing

They really must keep off that Vodka.

Sick Bird Mincers

It would seem that everything is not going quite so well in the Offshore wind turbine industry.

Roughly 600 of Europe’s installed 948 offshore turbines have been prone to grout connection failure, causing turbines to tilt within their monopile foundations. But according to some, the problem lies less with the grout itself, than with a design that relies on grout to hold the foundation and transition piece together.

So that’s 2/3 that are failing already. However all is not lost.

Retrofits: expensive, but promising

Several solutions to remedy ailing monopiles have come to the fore………………………………….

So the repairs are going to most likely cost us a small fortune.

Bloody useless bits of kit. They produce bugger all electricity when the wind isn’t blowing and fall over when it does.

Completely Bonkers

But incredibly brave

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Don’t try this at home.

25%. You what?

Is there something you’ve forgotten to tell us Mr Cameron?

The European Union is set to propose new regulations which could see British fuel prices rise by up to 25 per cent.

And that nice Mr Osbourne has let us have a whole 1p back.

Basing fuel tax on energy content rather than volume will mean a significant price rise for haulage companies and private motorists who use diesel.

That means diesel will cost me £1.76 a litre against the £1.41 I’m paying at present. At the moment it costs me £98.70 to fill up my tank. if that rise goes ahead it’s going to cost me £123. 37 in the future. An increase of  £24.67. WTF will that do to our Hauliers? I can see most small hauliers going to the wall and shops running out of goods, if this madness comes about

If this goes ahead we are truly screwed as a nation. Get a grip you cunts and do the right thing. Tell them to taking a running jump into Le Manche.

Monday meandering

 

RAILROAD TRACKS

The US  standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is
4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England and English
expatriates designed the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and
tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial   Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe
(including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used
ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. 
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Bureaucracies live forever.

The next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process
and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be
exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
(Two horses' arses.)

Now - the twist to the story:

A Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad has two big booster
rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are
solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol
at a factory in Utah .
Engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably
the world's most advanced transportation system, was
determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a
horse's ass!

AND YOU THOUGHT  BEING a horse's ass wasn't important!
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.

CURRENT Horses Asses in Washington are controlling
everything else.

VERY BRAVE MAN JOKES ---

Just to pass the time.

How do you turn a fox into an elephant?
Marry It!

What is the difference between a battery and a woman?
A battery has a positive side.

What are the three fastest means of communication?
1) Television
2) Telephone
3) Telawoman

What should you give a woman who has everything?
A man to show  her how to work it.

Why is the space between a woman's breasts and her hips called a waist?
Because you could easily fit another pair of tits in there..

How do you make 5 pounds of fat look good?
Put a nipple on it.

Why do women rub their eyes when they wake up?
Because they don't have balls to scratch.

Why do women fake orgasms ?
Because they think men care.

What do you say to a woman with 2 black eyes?
Nothing, she's been told twice already.

If your wife keeps coming out of the kitchen to nag at you, what have you done wrong?
Made her chain too long

How many men does it take to open a beer?
None. It should be opened when she brings it.

Why is a Laundromat a really bad place to pick up a woman?
Because a woman who can't even afford a washing  machine will probably never be able to support you.

Why do women have smaller feet than men?
It's one of  those 'evolutionary things' that allows them to stand closer to the kitchen sink.

How do you know when a  woman is about to say something smart?
When she starts a sentence with 'A man once told me...'

How do  you fix a woman's watch?
You don't. There is a clock on the oven.

Why do men pass gas more than women?
Because women can't shut up long enough to build up the required pressure.

If your dog  is barking at the back door and your wife is yelling at  the front door, who do you let  in first?
The dog, of course. He'll shut up once you let him in.

What's worse than a  Male Chauvinist Pig?
A woman who won't do what she's told

I married a Miss  Right.
I just didn't know her first name was Always.

Scientists have discovered a food that diminishes a woman's sex drive by 90%..
It's called a Wedding Cake.

Why do men die before their wives?
They want to.

Women will never be equal to men..
until they can walk down  the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still  think they are sexy.

Sorry

No posting today. The weather was too good.

Have a nice evening.

They’re coming for you now.

First they came for the smokers………………and I did nothing.

Then they came for the drinkers.

For all you drinking righteous who rejoiced that smokers were ejected out of the pubs and clubs into the cold. Well they’re coming for you now. The health puritans, having won their battle with smoking, are now going to use the same tactics on drinkers.

The slow creep of denormalisation by inducing a steady stream of half truths is slowly becoming a flood.

Drinking more than a pint of beer a day can substantially increase the risk of some cancers, research suggests.

The Europe-wide study of 363,988 people reported in the British Medical Journal found one in 10 of all cancers in men and one in 33 in women were caused by past or current alcohol intake.

Notice how the word “suggests” pops up in that first paragraph above. If they’re so certain, surely they would uses the word “proves”.

And from Cancer Research UK.

In the last 10 years, mouth cancer has become much more common and one reason for this could be because of higher levels of drinking - as this study reflects.

Notice here again they only use the word “Could”.

And if your overweight, they’re coming for you next.

Along with being a non-smoker and keeping a healthy bodyweight, cutting back on alcohol is one of the most important ways of lowering your cancer risk."

And from the Office of National Statistics comes this to prove that their stats about drinking more than in the past are just downright lies.

Now what shall I have for Lunch? Mmmm. I think a large pie and chips with lashings of salt. Washed down by half a bottle of Merlot. Followed by a fag.

*If any Americans are reading this. A fag is slang for cigarette.

A truly awesome Rant

A black american saying what he thinks about Islamic Fundamentalists.

However we in MultiCulti UK would never rant like that would we?

No. Because we would have the Thought Police breaking down the door in the small hours and dragging us away to a prison cell. Most likely because one person was offended on behalf of the “religion of Peace” (An oxymoron if nothing else).

My answer to Radical Islam is to state, in no uncertain terms, that if one more atrocity such as 9/11, or the bombings in London were to happen again, then the Islamic world would be taken to account. If our glorious leaders in the western world (and I spell leaders with a small l), had any balls they would quietly intimate that any such atrocity would be reciprocated a hundred fold.  I would suggest that a low yield nuclear weapon on one of the islamic holy sites would be the west’s answer. They might then get the message in those middle eastern countries, that quietly condone terrorism, that the west will not bow down to a religion that is living in the 7th century.

We must get away from this credo of national borders and realise that we are fighting an evil than does not recognise those borders. We war fighting losing a war that knows no conventional boundaries.

Maybe I’m too harsh on the fucking “Religion of Peace”. Please  tell me I’m wrong in the comment section. If you can make a good counter claim I will withdraw the post. If not, then you can get to hell and miss out on your seventy virgins that is promised in your fairy tale of child abuse, sodomy, rape, and a law that treats your women as chattels.

Mmmm. Oh well. Rant over.

I’m expecting my door to be kicked in,in the early hours.

UPDATE: Vid has been removed from Youtube as someone has complained  that it is hate speech.