Only 10 more months...

Dudes and Dudettes,
I know that you probably thought that I forgot to do my monthly reminder but I didn't. Actually I have been doing training today and yesterday. Today I was at a power plant teaching how to run our silo systems and so I had to work on a PowerPoint presentation until late into the night last night. I know... I know... so why did you wait until the last minute to put together your PowerPoint? It was unavoidable... I was doing other things!! Actually I had some deadlines that I had to meet before I could leave to go up to the power plants and those took priority and then I still had to do the PowerPoint and etc goes the excuses.

Wasn't it like just yesterday that I said "Only 11 more months" seems like it. 10 MONTHS TILL CHRISTMAS!!

A cool thing happened to me yesterday. For all the training that I am doing I needed a laser pointer. A long time ago at one of our camping trips we went to an astronomy dealy at the campgrounds where they brought in a guy, dude, star person, something like that... and he had this laser pointer. I was a little sceptical of it but when he pointed it into the sky you could see the laser not just a dot on the stars... actually you could not see the dot on the stars but you could see the laser trail up into the stars. The laser was green and I thought that was cool he could point out the constellations with the greatest of ease.

I have never been able to see the constellations, I mean I have trouble with dot to dot let alone looking up at the stars and seeing someone point and say oh yeah check out Leo the Lion... I see Orion's belt... Woooo Whoooo. Yeah I would get all excited because I think that is what you are supposed to do but I have never seen the lion in the stars or anything of Orion other than his belt. Dragon what dragon? But with his green laser that I think he could communicate with aliens with he was able to point out many constellations and I could see them. I can't remember anything about the constellations but it was cool looking at them with his laser.

Forward to present day. I needed a laser and I have always been annoyed when I have been in a presentation that the presenter uses a laser pointer and they point it at the screen and hit the item that they are pointing out and then their hand is not steady enough to keep the dot in one place and it ends up jumping all around the screen and... did I say that this annoys me?

Well I was with another engineer who was showing me the material that I need to cover and he was using a laser point (red) and it was not jumping all over the screen. He let me look at it and told me to get myself one if I was going to be covering all this training material as much as it looks like I will be doing. It was heavy but the size of a pen. When you held the weight evenly balanced in your hand it did not "jitter" no matter how far away you were pointing it.

I determined I would get the heaviest one I could find that would reasonably still fit in my hand and not cost the company too much.

Ran by Radio Shack last night on the way home from work and looked at the vast array of lasers that they carry, they had two. They had a red one and a green one. The green was much better weighted and suited my purpose better, the box also said it was 11X brighter than the red ones and could shine 4X's as far as a red one up to two miles. I can't think of a time that I will need to be two miles from the slide show that I am presenting... well unless I wanted to point out the constellations... except I can't remember where they are... I guess I can point out Orion's belt to someone.

I asked the sales dude if I could take the demo unit outside and see if I could show him Orion's belt and so we went outside and wouldn't you know you could see the dot in the tops of the trees but you could not see the beam itself. Humpf! I got it because it was a better weight and went home. Got home and went into the back yard where it was dark and wouldn't you know it you can see the beam and it looks like it shines about 2 miles too but I would not want the job of qualifying that specification. How would you know if the object in the sky was really two miles up? (Little Aggie humor... if those of you who are out of state don't get it... sorry. If those of you who are in state don't get it I'll bet you went to Texas A&M, I graduated from LeTourneau University.)

Anyway this e-mail has progressed once again to a length I did not intend, but not two miles. Too much detail again. I took a picture of the silo I was training on today and if you hit my facebook page you can see it.

Besides I really liked both lasers since they were red and green and that reminded me that I needed to send out this e-mail to remind all ya'll that Christmas is like only 10 months away. Don't forget the reason for the season, Jesus Birth! TTFN!

I wonder if my laser can hit Santa as he is flying through the sky? Wonder if I would get anything if I shot down Rudolph...

Till next month... Save the green M&M's for me.

KjS