Porkchops and Batman


Wow. Great weekend. On another topic, a personal
victory at work last week. The attached pic below
is a crappy screen-shot from the BRIZO website
(our "luxury label"), go ahead and look it over.




Anybody catch what's wrong?? As Americans who use
NORMAL toilets, probably not. I'll give you a
hint...the red arrow is pointing to the problem.
It's advertised for "serious culinary use" - and
this is a BIDET faucet....which is what europeans
use to wash out their asses after dropping a deuce
(note the nifty swiveling head to point the
cleansing stream where you need it) Nice. Very
classy, web designer. Way to make us look like a
real winner of a company. The personal victory?
Sending that screen-shot to the web-design group
and letting them know they need to try harder to
proof-read that stuff...

Now, I understand you may be upset with me for
including 2 bathroom-related posts out of my first
three....so I promise now this won't be a main
theme. Just to prove it, let's move this post in
a new direction right.........NOW!

I've been asking my various friends for the past
year or so about ways I can use my engr education
to serve my community. I was in scouting for
many years; while I don't necessarily aggree
with their religious underpinnings...or the failure
to admit gay scouts or gay leaders - they do have
one admirable goal : service. Community service
is a HUGE part of scouting, basically every campout
or trip we went on as a group, we had SOME type of
service project. Even if it was as simple as a
beach clean-up...or helping with trail maintenance
in a state park, we were always just out DOING
stuff that people needed done.

Since I've been out of scouting (6 years?) I've
basically forgotten about service. Truth be told,
I lead a really selfish lifestyle. I go to work
to pay for my drinking/partyin when I'm at school,
and my education's sole purpose is so that I can
go out and get a reasonably-well paying job. And
a great fraction of the time I spend at school is
spent playing video games and generally dicking
around. I don't volunteer anywhere (well, I'm
going to a habitat-for-humanity build later this
week - but that was only out of guilt when the
event organizers at work said they needed more
volunteers...I didn't SEEK OUT H.F.H.). - and it
bothers me. But back to my question. Is there
a way I can use my education to help someone
(in a non-business way)?? I mean, it's not
like there's a starving village in Uganda
where their well has run dry....

"oh, if only there were a mechanical engineer who
could build us a PUMP...or some other thermodynamic
device...to move this water up to us!!"

yeah right. The only good one I can come up with
is joining ASME.....the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers. But their only purpose is
to FURTHER OUR INDUSTRY'S INTERESTS....basically
they promote good ethics and practices among ME's
and write industry standards of quality... Now
all that is important, but it seems pretty
inconsequential when you compare it to Medcins
Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) where
med students actually get to GO to effin' Uganda
and pull land-mine shrapnel out of a 6-year-old's
legs...Or Lawyers (who people even JOKE about
being heartless and cruel) - they can do work
"Pro Bono" for clients who really need it..
.... I'm not saying I want to go to med
school or law school - I'm just saying my dinky
degree doesn't promote many opportunities for
service.

So, I know I don't have a lot of time for it now
(especially with the end of school - I WON"T have
time for it for a long while)...but eventually I
want to do something... as a Co-Op I know that
when you're SINGLE in a city away from all your
graduate friends, you have a SHIT-TON of free time.
Anyway, so far, the main conclusion
I've come to is that for it to be a meaningful,
hands-on direct impact type thing....it's NOT
going to be technical work at all. Ardy mentioned
a while ago that Tom's doing Big Brothers/Big
Sisters for this kid in Tampa.

Apparently, the boy
lives with more girls than James did growing up,
so he's desperately in need of some male-bonding
time. So - I give mad, MAD props to Tom for doing
that so soon out of school. It sounds like they
go to all kinds of art museums and ball-games for
reduced admission...and hell you all know how much
I like art/science museums..(well..if you didn't
know that, I DO like them a lot...)...plus I can
share all my factoids with the little guy and
turn him into an egghead like me.

Anyway...I'll end this post by saying I welcome
suggestions on service opportunities related to
my $100k degree.....but if I get nothing then
there's plenty of satisfying stuff out there to
get involved with...and I need to keep that in
mind.