Allan, I'd like to agree with you, but it don't seem to be working out that way. I turn on the TV, watch it for a while and come to the conclusion that somehow the world turned upside down. Upside down. Then I walk outside, take a breath of fresh air down at the barn, out in the fields, look around and say "Don't look upside down". Then I go back in and watch and listen to TV, I go back to the world is upside down. It can't be any more upside down. Surely everyone sees that its upside down by now even if it don't look upside down as I stand outside and look around. But maybe it really aint upside down at all. Maybe its like a diesel that's running backwards, 180 out of phase. I can't explain it any other way. We went to bed one night and woke up in the twilite zone? Upside down, running backwards, twilite zone. I'm out of ideas.
True story, one of the best I've ever heard, just heard it today, ever. I'm 49, so not that old. A punk. I'm working with a guy today, got some years on me. Started working in the late '60's when I was still single digits age wise. We're talking about work today's ethics, you know, upside down, running backwards, and... So when he was 18, was a boiler apprentice. He tells me he's out one time somewhere in Chicago, just finishing up on a new boiler and no matter what he does, he can't get it to fire right. Goes through it again and again, can't keep it lit, so he calls out the gas company. A crew shows up and he explains the situation, and this really old timer on the crew gives him a wink and says he knows exactly what's wrong, tells him he'll be back and leaves. He comes back and says try it now, so Bob (the guy I was with today) fires it up and bingo, its working. Bob said he asked him what he did to fix it, and the old timer said he worked the install of that area back in the early '50's and was supposed to have a 6" main, but during the install they "...only had 4" pipe and there was no way that we weren't going to work, so we did what we had to and made it work", so to fix Bob's problem he increased the pressure to that main. My point is that back then, they made stuff work with what they had to work with, but today if it takes more than a blackberry, it aint happening. Of course...I did have to chuckle though. Back in the mid '80's I moved from the country to the big city of Chicago after I got out of the Army, and I remember that there was an explosion in a gas vault under an intersection that pretty much leveled an entire city block, both sides. I chuckled to Bob, "Must've been one of those over pressured under sized pipes from the '50's". Bob chuckled "Guess they should've had blackberrys back then".
Mark
