Men's Restrooms...

Where I work, there are about 2000 people all together working the 4 different shifts. There are Men and Women's Restroom facilities all over the buildings.

Having said that, two things come to mind. One is how come at any given time that I want to go and use the head it is being cleaned? There are about 3 restrooms that I will use because they are not very high-traffic and stay fairly clean, or as clean as they can be with so many people.

There are about 5-8 cleaning personnel that work at night and do janitorial duties from cleaning the floor to emptying out trash cans. About 2 of them clean the bathrooms. Now given that so many people use them, they can get very dirty! It makes me wonder what some of these people's bathrooms at home look like. Look at the pic and you can see that the urinal is a very big opening. HOW CAN YOU MISS?? It is like a 2 foot circumference!! With piss all over the floor it is disgusting!! They had to totally rebuild one of the bathrooms here. It was shut down for over a month. You would walk into it and smell mildew and mold. YUCK!!

I wonder how the female bathrooms get around here? I know that they do not have urinals and problem have twice as many commodes. I am sure that they are very nice and pretty and smell good compared to ours. There is nothing worse than coming in to use the restroom and have the smell of stale urine hit you when you use the urinal!! Pee smells bad enough, but stale pee, I mean, come on.

Now, back to your regular scheduled biobreak...

What is your opinion?

Work Stuf...

Well, i interview for the 300mm AMHS position at Qimonda on Thursday at 4.30pm!! I am very excited at the prospect of getting a job here...

Keep me in your prayers...


What is your opinion?

Moving Night Shot.

Moving Night Shot., originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I was trying to get a shot of the US Air force memorial from across the river. I was standing at the Ben Franklin Memorial and it was too far to shoot free hand. I tried anyway and moved the cam while the shot was taking. This is what happened.

Our Personal Website

Today, i got our website back up and running. The URL = www.thermstringers.com


What is your opinion?

My New Blog...

This one will always be my Main Blog to post on. I liked the name so much"Random Falling Trees" that i decided to make a blog about it!! I will post pics of fallen trees around the area i live and work. It will be a funny, strange new blog. It will be mainily a photography blog. So, give me some time and i will get some pics up on it soon!!

What is your opinion?

Random Falling Trees...

Folks over the last 7 years I have lived and traveled all over the USA. I have been to Yellowstone several times. I have been to Devils Tower and to Mt. Rushmore. I have skied in Colorado, New Mexico, and Massachusetts, but no where have I ever lived where we have random falling trees!

We go to several parks and ride our bikes along the trails and paths. You can see that people have used trees to make obstacles to ride over and they are fun. But to go riding on a regular basis and see that trees have fallen since the last time perhaps due to wind, poor soil condition, disease, or root structure is just amazing to me.

I know that some of this is natural and it will happen where ever you live and that it is a part of the natural process. I drive down Genito Road on my way home and it is very wooded. I see new fallen trees at least every 2-3 weeks in the wooded sides of the road. We road in Powhite Park several times in the last month and there were new fallen trees on some of the trails and others that were about to fall. Way is this?? If you drive down Charter Colony Parkway and look in the woods, you will see lots of fallen random trees that I have been told were from a hurricane Isabella that occurred several years ago. It looked like some one just at random took and pulled up the trees for no real reason.

Why would one tree withstand the force and one next to it succumb to it? I mean the base of the tree about 6 feet apart. And further more, it seams like the residents do not mind that they just lay there and rot on the ground. Trees are responsible for more power outages than one would imagine. Take a good storm that comes thru a wooded area and the power lines are not cut back; there you go, a limb has just takes out a power line. Why in fact in Texas where my mother used to live, a tree fell on her car and crushed it and on a separate occasion, a big limb fell out of another tree and tore down the power lines to her house. This in turn caused the house to catch on fire and burn to the ground. That sucked!!

So in guess what in am trying to say is watch out for Random Falling Trees...

What is your opinion?

In The Dumbass File Today...Height restriction signs aren’t just a suggestion

Trucker sheers off roof driving too-big-rig length of Lincoln Tunnel

A damaged truck rests in a lane outside New York's Lincoln Tunnel on Thursday after a driver, whose rig was 6 inches too tall for the tunnel, drove its entire 1.5-mile length, peeling the trailer's roof and ripping off decorative ceiling tiles.

NEW YORK - A truck driver whose rig was 6 inches too tall for the Lincoln Tunnel drove its entire 1.5-mile length, peeling the trailer’s roof completely and ripping off decorative ceiling tiles.Flashing signs and officers using a loudspeaker had warned the driver, and it was unclear why he didn’t heed them, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the tunnel.

“He misjudged the height of the tunnel, and once he was inside it he didn’t realize the damage he was doing,” said Roy Guzman, the safety director of the trucker’s employer, U.S.A. Logistics Carriers of McAllen, Texas.

The driver, from Texas, was charged with nine misdemeanor moving violations.The central tube of three in the tunnel heading into Manhattan was closed for about 90 minutes after the accident early Thursday, but reopened just before the morning rush hour.

On the rare occasions when other trucks have scraped the tunnel’s ceiling, the drivers have stopped, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said. Police then let air out of the trucks’ tires, so the rigs can be backed out.

I am going to make this a new post every week.

What is your opinion?

Red Fridays...

Red Friday's

 

 Soon, you will see a great many people wearing RED every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority". We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday - and continues each and every Friday until the troops come home, sending a deafening message that ... every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something red.

By word of mouth, press, TV - let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red, much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, co-workers, friends and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know that once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.

The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?" is, "We need your support and your prayers." Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something red every Friday.

Check out the Casa D' Ice RED FRIDAY Gear on our web site. Proceeds from all RED GEAR will be donated to (a Veteran Group soon to be named after the legalities are worked out and signed).

 

Thanks to LCDC Mike Sieverson for forwarding this to me.
--
RMSTringer
+++++++++++++++

A Post About Posting...

I know that people read my blog all over. I just wonder why it is that no one ever wants to leave comments. I welocme you feedback and replies. I want you to post and let me know what you think and if I am doing a good job or not.

So PLEASE people, leave me a little comment to let me know how i am doing.

Thankx,
RMStringer
***************
Owner, Operator, Bob's Thoughts

What is your opinion?

Back at work...

Yesterday was basically my "day off" I got home around 8.15am, ate breakfast, showered and went to sleep. I got up around 3.30pm, drank a Full Throttle and the preceded to mow the lawn. It was hot and I also had to rake the grass off our hill.

I have been in a very reflective mood over the past few days and thinking about old long gone friends that I used to have. I have moved around a lot and made friends around the country. Through the years, I have lost several long time friends.

One friend that I lost I met in High School when I was in 11th grade. He had some issues and left dropped out from his other school He came to our school from another one. As it turned out, we had many things of interest, mainly music and partying and had some common friends. As the years followed, he moved to College Station (A&M) and I went to Nacogdoches (SFA) for college. We stayed in touch and got together when we could on Christmas and Thanksgiving breaks and during the summers.

I moved back home and attended Lamar Institute of Technology and he moved to Galveston to attend UTMB. He got his PHD in Genetic Chemistry and I got a Tech degree for LIT. During this time we both got heavily into drugs and did so for many years going to Houston and visiting a friend and all forms a debauchery ensued for many years. A long a bout 2001, while he was living on the East Coast, I was in Austin, I got clean and sober which was a good thing! He and I continued to talk and chat, share music and stuff like that via the internet. As fate would have it, we ended up living on the East Coast as well and visited a few times. He had become a research scientist for a government agencies and became all mature...

He tried to enforce his morals on me and we had several arguments and did not speak for some time (we are not speaking at the present and have not for over 6 months) He wools call out of the blue, drunk or so it seamed, and want to send me gifts, Very strange behavior. And then want to act like my Dad and enforce his morals again. His behavior became very eradiate and strange while my life had become very "normal" with being married and hopping about the country with my fire and daughter. It appears that all we really ever had in common was drugs and that when that was taken away; there was really no fiber as it were to sustain a friendship. With his erratic behavior we are no longer on speaking terms. He, several months ago, wanted me to come up and visit him and go to his girlfriend’s house. I was very uncomfortable with this idea and did not.

To this day, I do not know how or where he is and I guess that is for the best. Some chapters in your life need to be closed and kept closed. This is one in my life. I now have other friends that I do much more meaningful things with like ride mountain bikes and go to movies with. Life is nice here in Midlothian if only for a fleeting moment...

Time will tell.



What is your opinion?

Work Stuff...

Well, it seams like the whole world is going crazy! People are leaving the job I work like rats on a sinking ship. I work on Nights 2 shift. Nights 1 shift, my old shift, is down to 1 tech, so I and my work partner have to rotate in and out of that shift to keep the coverage where it needs to be. So basically, I get 1 day off this week and that is tomorrow. I have worked since Sunday night and I will come back in on Thursday night and go till Sunday night.

I work a compressed work week and 12.5 hr shifts. My schedule is normally like this. 2 on 3 off. 3 on 2 off. But with shift coverage like it is, I am working more like 3 on 1 off 4 on 1 off. Great money, but it sucks because I like to have a life also.

The only thing that will make it all worthwhile is the fact that next week, I interview for Qimonda for a 300mm Automation position. It will be much better benifits and overall package as opposed to the contractor that I am working for now. We are subbed out to Murata via ColonialWebb and their benifits package suck and they offer no support and have offered no support during the last few months. SO it will be a BIG RELIEF if I get a job with Qimonda.

What really burns my ass up is when a company talks about "customer support" and "Integrity" but it is really a line of crap filled with smoke and mirrors to make you feel like they care, but when it really comes down to it, they worry about the bottom dollar and not the person. I have worked for many contractors and a few I have really liked and they meant what they said. But ColonialWebb talk a wonderful game and look good, but they have fallen down on the job where I work...

What is your opinion?

Brown Recluse Spider- a Must read

I am sure that most have seen or read this email, but with the warmer months ahead and people getting out and working in the yard, i thought that this would be a good reminder for everyone, so be careful!

The Dangerous Brown Recluse Spider is native to the United States from the southern Midwest south to the Gulf of Mexico The native range lies roughly south of a line from southeastern Nebraska through southern Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana to southwestern Ohio. In the southern states, it is native from central Texas to western Georgia. They are generally not found west of the Rocky Mountains

It's summertime & cleanup is going on. Be careful where you put your hands. They like dark spaces & woodpiles; and cool attic areas.

This guy was bitten by a Brown Recluse spider.

Day 3
The following illustrates the progression of a brown recluse spider bite.
The affected skin actually dies on his body and is called Necrosis

Day 5
Some of the pictures towards the end are pretty nasty.
This just shows the progression of what the bite can do to a body part.

Day 6
The Brown Recluse Spider is the most dangerous spider that we have here in the USA. The venom actually seals off the capillaries and produces a dry crusty wound.

Day 9
A person can die from it's bite. However, a small number of bites produce severe dermonecrotic lesions, and, sometimes, severe systemic symptoms, including organ damage. Rarely, the bite may also produce a systemic condition with occasional fatalities. Most fatalities are in children under 7 or those with a weaker than normal immune system.

Day 10
As you can see the skin has continued to die from the bite. The damaged tissue will become gangrenous and eventually slough away. The initial bite frequently cannot be felt and there may be no pain, but over time the wound may grow to as large as 10 inches (25 cm) in extreme cases.

We all should know what the spider looks like. People will be digging around, doing yard work, spring cleaning, and sometimes in their attics. Please be careful. Spider bites are dangerous and can have permanent and highly negative consequences. They like the darkness and tend to live in storage sheds or attics or other areas that might not be frequented by people or light. If you have a need to be in your attic, go up there and turn on a light and leave it on for about 30 minutes before you go in to do any work.

What is your opinion?

Memorial Day...

Well, i got off work this morning at 7.15am and hurried home to meet my friend Mark to go and do a quick ride.  We went to Pocahontas Park and did the Red Trial.  It is a good trial as it has many log piles and several sets of Half Pipes to go in and out of. We got there around 8:15ish and we had a tight schedule as he had to be home to get food started for the cook out this afternoon and i had to get home to sleep!   So basically we did 4 miles in about 30 minutes!!  Not bad for a 7.5 minute mile!! 

 

I got home a slept till 3.00pm and went to his house with my wife and daughter and several other friends and we had a good time eating and talking and visiting on the deck. I am glad that it was earlier as we are having some thunder storms this evening.  Good timing for the party.  I am going riding on Wednesday morning with mike and perhaps Jeff. I have to get my exercise in because of all the hours that i am working.  

I hope that all have a good rest of the evening...
--
RMSTringer
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Naturally occurring asbestos ...

Naturally occurring asbestos has been mapped in approximately 11 square miles of Fairfax County, which includes a part of Fairfax City. Asbestos bearing rock is interspersed in the Green Stone Rock Formations that underlie the surface soils in the Orange Soils Group. Surface exposure of these rock formations are not usually seen.

Here is a pic link to show the exposed substance. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/hd/asb/images/test005.jpg

Large amounts of tremolite asbestos have also been found in Virginia as well as 18 other states, including a large number of eastern states – with a recognizable band of asbestos running from Alabama to Vermont.

Natural deposits of asbestos can cause considerable problems, especially for homeowners who have unknowingly built their domiciles on ground laden with the material. California is thought to be the state which is most affected. EPA officials found natural asbestos deposits in 50 out of 58 California counties. One of the areas in which asbestos is most prevalent is in the county of El Dorado, where homeowners have literally walked away from million dollar homes due to the presence of large amounts of tremolite asbestos found in the soil.

I saw an article about this on Slashdot and i got interested as i live in Virginia. This interested me as we all know that you need to stay away from asbestos becauses it causes Lung Cancer, malignant mesothelioma to be exact. So how can a home builder decided to use land that has natural asbestos in it and sell houses on that land? One post said that they should make a park out of the land where it will never be exposed to the public. Really? A park, I would not want my kid playing in a park that was built over such a spot. Test conducted by the EPA determined that everyday activity, such as gardening or baseball games, kicked up an inordinate amount of asbestos.“Results show that everyday outdoor work and play in these areas create a personal storm of asbestos-tainted dust”

I am glad that i live in Midlothian...

What is your opinion?

Recovery Posts...

It has been a while since I posted about Recovery and the reason is that i just have not felt like doing it.  May 15 was 4 years Clean and sober for me!  It has been a long tiem since i had a drink or drug and u am the better for it. So i have just been very reflective about a lot of things in my life and i have also had  lots of things going on such as job status and work at home.  So, that si the reason that i have not posted about it for a while...

--
RMSTringer
+++++++++++++++

Part 6 - Step 11 of my Recovery...

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

This is a very key step in the action part. We all get so busy in your daily lives that we forget to pray about what is going on and if that is what is needed to be what is going on with us. I guess what I am trying to say is that what we are doing; is that what God wants us to be doing. You can get into the whole preordained life or random life thing here-DONT!

In order for this to work, you have to ask God what he needs/wants us to do. I have a problem doing this like most addicts because I want what I want to go on and not what He wants me to do. I try to take back the control in my life and when I do that it most of the time messes up or backfires on me. This is very hard for me to do, but when I do this, it is amazing! When I get out of self and I help other people like I am supposed to it helps me. That is a simple concept, helping you helps me and that is how God wants it. Trying to stay in conscious contact with God is the hard part. We get so busy in our daily grind that we forget to ask is this what I am supposed to do and is it even what you need me to do?

If we just quiet our little voice that we all have and try to listen to God in a meditative moment, we will get the answer. It might not be what we want to hear and often times it is not, but it is what we are supposed to do if you follow the Step to the exact letter. In the Big Book, it says that "Half Steps availed us nothing" which means that we have to do it all or not. DO not halfass make an attempt because it will not work. I try to pray about big things and ask that His will be done; I need to do this in all situations, but I fall short.

If we pray for His power and knowledge to help us in our lives, we are doing Step 11 to the fullest. Do not think that it can be done all the time and completely from the beginning, Rome was not built in a day and it took time for you to get this way. SO try to do as is requested but don’t be too hard on yourself if you do not get it right and you don’t get the answers that you were looking for. They will come when your will come inline with God's Will...


God Bless and have a good Memorial Day.

What is your opinion?

Memorial Day Weekend... Part Dux

It has been a very busy weekend at the Stringer house. I slept till 12.30pm when i got home from my shift yesterday and then the fun began...

We bought paint and proceeded to redo the upstairs bedrooms. We used a Toasted Wheat colored paint. We got it from Home Depot as well as several brushes and rollers. What we learned really quick was that we needed lent free rollers. SO, back to the store we went and bought several lent free rollers. They worked very well, no more lent, but we had to worry about dried latex paint strings getting on the rollers from the paint dish.

We did the little room quickly and then moved on to the big room, it was Chelsea's old room. She moved to the other room upstairs (over the kitchen) We painted the walls and trimmed out around the tape. we decided to leave ti on till today and then we decided to paint the ceiling Ultra Bright White. IT was kind of messy as we will have a lot of trimming to do once again with the Toasted Wheat where it ends and the white begins. We moved around the Air Hockey table to the bigger room and the old set and now all we need to buy is a mattress set and we will be doen with this phase of the house project.

I am off to sleep as i have taken an extra shift on Sunday Night...


What is your opinion?

Indiana Adopts $1000 Speeding Tickets...

I used to live in Indiana, Maryville to be exact, and this state like Massachusetts roads SUCK!!They need the revenue from these gangster prices to help keep their roads repaired. It was and is a continuous cycle of lay new road in summer, road get beat all to hell in Winter from snow plow and then rebuild in the Summer again. The only thing that is different in Indiana is that they do not have a 10 billion dollar sinkhole called The Big Dig.

Indiana Adopts $1000 Speeding TicketsThe Indiana Department of Transportation to collect work zone speeding ticket revenue beginning July 1. Maximum citation increased to $1000.The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) will soon be the direct beneficiary of speeding ticket revenue under a bill recently signed by Governor Mitch Daniels (R).

The measure gives INDOT the power to decrease speed limits "without conducting an engineering study and investigation" in highway work zones. INDOT can direct police to enforce this lowered limit, regardless of whether workers are actually present. The law also mandates that no work zone speed limit exceed 45 MPH.As of July 1, INDOT will collect the revenue from these fines which the law also boosts significantly. The first offense runs $300, the second $500 and the third $1000. Anyone contesting the fine in court faces an additional $70 fee if found guilty.

The bill also creates a new work zone category for "aggressive driving" that makes it a misdemeanor to drive 46 MPH in a freeway work zone while flashing headlights and honking the horn at a slow-moving car in the left lane, or any other combination of three maneuvers deemed aggressive. The first offense carries a $5000 fine and up to one year in jail, while a second offense is a felony punishable by up to three years in jail and a $10,000 fine."I would like to thank the governor for his quick action in signing these important bills into law," said the state Senate sponsor of the legislation, Mike Delph (R-Carmel).


What is your opinion?

Beaumont Texas...Circa 1994

I lived in Settler's Cove Apartments in Beaumont Texas in 1993 and 1994. We called it Suckers Cove. It was Beaumont's premier dysfunctional community back then. They were close to Parkdale Mall which was nice.

During my stay there, I was a writer for a Public Press magazine in Beaumont called Image Magazine. I did music reviews for it. A friend named Cliff Lofton ran the mag and he also did promotions at Phaze 2 dance club like Trash Disco, Starz Reunions (which still go on in Beaumont) and various other things around the "Golden Triangle"

It was fun during those times. I was attending the Lamar Institute of Technology for at that time, computer robotics. That later became nothing as I left school, got engaged, and moved to Tempe Arizona. That will be another story for another day. We always went to the club and over to Houston to Numbers Club. I knew the owner and he also owned Record Rack (RIP). His name was Bruce Godwin. I used to purchase massive amounts of music from him at Record Rack back in the day. Needless to say, those were heady times back then running the roads from Houston to Beaumont to Louisiana at any time during the day or night. It is a wonder that I am still alive...

I have come a long way since then. It is nice to revisit old memories, but that is all, never go back down them and learn from them...
What is your opinion?

Boycott The Riaa...

Here are a few SWEET posters that can be ordered from this site: www.cafepress.com

What is your opinion?