What I’ve Learned in my Time as a Tradesman

I fell into becoming a carpenter a little over a year ago. I had to renovate my mother’s house in order to sell it some time before that and get her into a better living situation, and learned a lot of it as I went. As that chapter was coming to a close, a friend saw the work I’d done, knew a guy, and asked if I’d be interested in learning the trade proper. I said “What the hey, why not?” and now here we are.

And I’ve learned a ton!* Chiefly:

If you did it, then it was the best it could have been done and anything wrong with it was probably someone else’s fault anyway.
If someone else did it and it sucks, then it’s because that person’s an idiot who doesn’t know a duck’s ass from its bill.
If someone else did it and it’s great, then it still sucks a little bit, but maybe they’re not a total moron.

I…I do what I can to not carry this into daily life.

Cheers, everybody.

*This list was compiled from a combined experience watching or listening to experienced old tradesmen in their 50’s-60’s talk about their own work or work they’ve observed specializing in but not limited to: carpentry, plumbing, roofing, HVAC, pouring concrete, and refrigeration. I have a Jewish uncle that works with refrigeration that would likely concur with all points on this list, so you know you can trust it.

A Story about “That Guy”

I was musing on this the other day, but most of us have probably heard an adage or two about not being “That Guy.” You know the one: the guy who keeps his shoes on in the home of people that ask for shoes off, the guy who litters his trash in the park while everyone else cleans their own up, the guy who laughs or talks loudly in the movie theater, on and on. We all know a “that guy.”

Little known fact about me: I was at one point Emergency Medical Responder certified and on my way to being an EMT/Paramedic. It was my first course of study out of high school before I decided that path was very much not for me. That said, I still carry a bit of baseline first-aid know-how in my noggin, and was certified as such once upon a time, is the point.

One of the lesser-known things you’re taught as an EMT-to-be is scene management; that is, interacting/handling the injured, onlookers, Nosey Nellies, the works. It cultivates one sense in particular, that being knowing the fine line between being helpful and being in the way.

So, one day I’m at the bank. I’m using an outdoor ATM basically on the corner of two busy streets, and I hear a sound that goes something like “Uuurrrt- bang!” I turn my head to see that an elderly pedestrian had been struck by a van not heeding a red light. “Oof,” I think, and retrieve my card from the ATM before walking over to see what I can do, which I knew thankfully would be pretty simple: hold C-Spine on the patient (keep their head in the same position it is, in case there’s damage to the spine), keep them calm while taking mental notes to assess their overall condition, call 9-1-1, and gather information from witnesses and the driver if possible.

In the time it took for me to pull my card out of the machine, maybe six seconds, I turned around to see an individual already doing exactly everything I’d described above. He had his hands appropriately maintaining the patient’s head position and seemed to have a level head as he introduced himself and began asking appropriate questions. The driver was being a bit loony – no doubt a bit freaked out over the consequences of hitting the pedestrian – but the Samaritan was doing a fine job of keeping them enough in line. I decide the best place for me is somewhere else, so as to not just be another body in the way, because outside of that, there were only a couple of bystanders observing the excitement of the scene.

And then…there was That Guy.

That Guy was adamant this was an URGENT CRISIS, and HE was the one who was going to HELP BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Then, That Guy decided all traffic in and around the area NEEDED TO STOP. RIGHT. NOW. Mind you, again, we’re on the corner of two notably busy streets around five in the afternoon, meaning there is a lot of traffic on the road at that moment which had suddenly come to a stop. Now, with lines of cars growing, they began to find their way safely around the scene of the accident.

Or, I should say, tried to begin finding their way, but not if That Guy had anything to say about it (and oh boy, did he). This man threw himself in front of cars that were nowhere near the stopped van and the patient in order to “help out.” I still vividly recall him running down the road in a panic – wearing slip-on sandals and a loose backpack, mind you – chasing down and screaming at passing cars that “You need to stop, right now!”

So, I hope that if you’re reading this, you’ve never been a That Guy; and if you were at one point, you’ve seen the error of your ways. He wasn’t helping, even the least bit, but in his insistent, unsolicited effort to help, he became a hindrance and a hazard. If this was a Public Safety Announcement, I’d hope it functions like a true cautionary tale and keeps a few more That Guy’s from spawning into existence.

Cheers, y’all. Stay safe out there.

Old Limits, New Heights – an update & news

Twenty-seven is a strange age.

You’re old enough now to have enough experience to “know better” and have gone through enough tribulations that you’ve come out the other side of some difficulty; but at the same time, still young enough to be referred to as “a kid in their 20’s.” In a lot of ways, it’s kind of having the best of both worlds: enough years under your belt to claim experience and authority in some situations, but just enough green to claim ignorance and get away with it most of the time.

It’s also tricky, because I want to introduce a story with “when I was a young man,” or “when I was younger,” they both feel a little disingenuous because I mean, like, five years ago.

…

So, when I was a young(er) rapscallion, I was delusional about my prowess in hand-to-hand combat. Like we discussed way back in “Fight Club: Fringe League,” I’m way more cognisant of those limits nowadays. I know that I don’t know the correct way to uncork a punch. I’m aware I don’t have a trained poise for rolling with or absorbing punches and kicks. I have some idea of how hard it is to control yourself or another human while in a wrestling scramble. But a few years ago, that wasn’t the case at all.

I argued with friends and coworkers, pretty vehemently mind you, that I could handle myself in a fight with a mountain lion. I was convinced that as the cat would leap at me, I could sidestep it, pop it in the mouth, and leave it dazed and confused on the dirt. I had a whole technique that was 100% foolproof (emphasis on “fool,” here) wherein my thumbs would hook the corners of its mouth and my forearms would block the claws just below the paw, rendering me completely safe from its assault.

I realized later that, as a cat in that situation, it would still have hind legs with sharp-ass claws that it would use to deftly carve open my soft-ass torso, disemboweling me in maybe a few seconds.

And while I’m ranting about this, another thing. I saw a YouTube video some years ago (I tried finding it, but to no avail – so allow me to paint the scene) featuring a zoo enclosure somewhere in southeast Asia, I believe. Unlike the enclosures we have here in the U.S., it’s the massive open expanse, and the feed isn’t a slab of steak through a door, but a live feeding. Meaning, they dump a live cow or goat in the middle of this field, peel out, and the – in this case – tigers jump all over it, giving them some semblance of a hunt.

It was in this particular video that they were fed in this way a single large cow who, after being dropped in this field, naturally tried to make a break for it. To humans, do you know how f***ing strong a cow is? A cow could level an average person without even meaning to. Well, four tigers swarm this ole gal and just one of them brings her to the ground with minimal – and I mean MINIMAL – effort. Three just start going to town, tearing into the soft bits, and the cow is…well, being loud about it. The fourth tiger is calmly watching its siblings fill their tummies when it decides to saunter over, grip the cow’s neck with its teeth, and snap it like a cracker.

Y’all, it mercy-killed that bovine with the same energy I use to take a sip of coffee. And that monster was the kind of thing I thought I could “K.O. if I had the chance, bro.”

Disgusting.

Anyway, another book with my name on it came out this month!
Bards & Sages Publishing has their “Society of Misfit Stories Presents…” vol.III issue out now on Amazon for those looking for a paperback, and for the e-readers among us, Smashwords is doing their thing and offering a 20% off discount through the end of the year if you use the code PC74V at checkout.
Look for my contribution to the collection, “High Noon,” which follows a Canadian kid who tries to hike the Pacific Crest Trail but gets…caught up as he takes on a mysterious guest.
And that’s kind of sweet.

Til next time, y’all.

Ants v. Cats – A Moral Dilemma

So, last time, I mentioned that I had a background project in the works that involved some of the most ridiculous math I’d ever done, right? Cool, well, some backstory.

Our current living situation is a little weird. Mandy (girlfriend extraordinaire) and I share a house with technically two other roommates and a gaggle of children. The children are present because, during weekdays, the house also operates as a nursery or daycare run by one of the aforementioned roommates. That meant that while I was home for a while between work seasons, there were nursery workers running around and the need for ice breakers arose. It’s an oldie but a goodie, meaning I resort to it often, but I enjoy asking, “If you could have one super power, what would it be?” I’m sure we’ve all given or answered that one once or twice in our own time. And it worked!

It also started a trend. So, every now and then while things were slow at the nursery (ie our house), I’d pop in with another dorky, speculative question. After a few of these, we arrived at a particularly juicy one: “If you had to choose, would you rather make all cats in the world the size of ants, or all ants in the world the size of cats?” I urge you to think on it too, in fact. Go on, I’ll wait…

…

Have your answer?

Sweet. Well, then you should also know that if you picked ants becoming the size of cats, you’re painfully, horrendously, ineffably, woefully, deliriously incorrect.

She, quite sensibly, choose to make all cats on the planet the size of ants. A sizeable loss for the cat-lovers among us, no doubt, but at the cost of saving the planet. Since I thought it was funny, I brought the question to Mandy, who said the above horrible answer AND tried to justify it. “Aww, but what will the anteaters eat?” was one point, that still thoroughly vexes me.

Anyway, I got so wrapped up in debating with her just how awful a sudden influx of cat-sized ants would be to the planet that I resorted to doing math. Like, actual hardcore arithmetic. Y’all, I wound up doing (and am still doing) more math in my free time than I ever have in my whole academic life. So, if I may, I’m going to present just some of the preliminary findings in my research and calculations.

As it turns out, there are an estimated 1 Quadrillion ants (1,000,000,000,000,000) on the planet right at this very moment, while there are a far more modest estimated 600 Million cats (600,000,000) at present. That means, there are about one and two-thirds millions times as many ants as there are cats on the planet right now. (# of Ants = # of Cats x 1,666,666.67)

The first thought I had when considering this is all we’re covering here today, which was: What would the seismic impact be of a sudden weight shift like that be? Like, forgetting ecological, topographical, geological, societal, and all the other -al’s, just the strain of all the suddenly added weight. What would that do to the planet’s tectonic plates?

The ultimate answer is: I’m not sure, but it would likely lead to some earthquakes in the short term; and I’d imagine, even more in the long term. As I’ve found, studies have been done on this sort of thing regarding shifting waters linked to rains and monsoon seasons, and have concluded that those seasonal occurrences lead to seismic activity (albeit small). For example, the study observes that monsoon season affects quake frequency around the Himalayas, so I did some math.

To calculate the weight of a monsoon, feasibly the amount of weight/pressure that reliably affects seismic activity, I took the given land area of India (3,287,263 sq. km), used the upper limit of expected rain fall over a monsoon season (300 mm), and ran those numbers through a rain fall calculator. The result showed a total deposit of 986,178,900,000,000 liters of water hitting the ground, which weighs roughly 21,741,523,121,299 lbs.

So, if the weight of a monsoon affects seismic activity to a noticeable degree, and we have that, then we know the amount of weight needed to affect seismic activity is somewhere around twenty-two trillion pounds (21,741,523,121,299 lbs).

Ants weigh anywhere between 1mg and 5mg, so we’ll call their average 3mg.

Cats, feral and domestic, on average, weigh between 8lbs and 10lbs. So we’ll call their average 9lbs.

For perspective, to have the equivalent to one pound, it takes 453,592mg; which means that the average cat weighs the same as 1,360,776 average ants. To put it another way, your average cat weighs x1,360,776 that of your average ant. To put it ANOTHER way, every ant that becomes the size of a cat means an increase in weigh of 136,077,600%

Finally, taking the estimates on how many ants there are and how many cats there are on the planet today, and knowing their average weights per individual ant or cat, we know that there are roughly 6,138,000,000 lbs of ants on the planet right now, and approximately 5,400,000,000 lbs of cats on the planet right now; meaning that if one were to make all the ants on the planet instantaneously the size of cats, that would mean a sudden addition of almost eight and a half Quadrillion pounds (8,352,436,950,000,000lbs) to the planet’s surface.

If it takes 22 Trillion pounds to start seismic activity, then to be clear, to be very frank…<ahem>…the sudden weight of ants WOULD SHIT ON THAT NUMBER.

8,352,436,950,000,000 / 21,737,365,862,331 = 384.24
[I shaved some decimals off of the result there because it does not at all matter. What matters is…]

The weight of ants after the switch is over three hundred and eighty TIMES what it takes to cause noticeable seismic activity; not to even mention that the weight change would be instantaneous rather than over the course of a month like with monsoon seasons. Trying to figure out THAT angle of the impact might mean learning how to calculate Newtons and Joules, which will take someone smarter than me to figure out, but let’s all safely assume that before the ants would even be able to tear our cities, infrastructure, and eco systems apart, their arrival alone would probably be equivalent to several million nuclear bombs…

…

I also have an anthology with Bards & Sages Publishing coming out this month, which is pretty rad. So stay tuned for that. It’s a story I’m pretty fond of.

Anyway, until next time. Ciao.