Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Overheard in the Office, Part Deux:

Me: "RWC just said 'Wait until next week when they offer the board bender package'..."

RX: "What's a board bender?"

Me: "I dunno... hang on..." *clickity-click* "Here you are."

RX: "Oh, one of those! Those are neat! You use those when you're building decks and..."

Me: "Wow, you could really f#@$ somebody up with one of those things!"

RX: "You say that about everything: tools, flashlights, shoes, wine bottles..."

30 comments:

ToddG said...

"Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right." -- Ani Difranco

Robert McDonald said...

Those little drills are handy
I've used them a lot.

Robert McDonald said...

Ok, that comment wasn't supposed to go there.

og said...

You should see how they bend the 3" thick by 15" wide by 120' long boards that go on the side of the Avenger class minesweepers at Peterson Shipbuilders in Wisconsin. Hydraulics and steam are heavily involved, and the finished product is a marvel of woodworking.

WV: Intented. I was standing in the forest when it started to rain, then I intented.

Tango Juliet said...

Pretty difficult to disarm that kind of mind.

NotClauswitz said...

Could have used the board-bender when we did the curve in the dining-room - but the first 1/2" board broke, so we faked-it with two thicknesses of 1/4"...

FxR said...

"There is no such thing as a dangerous weapon, only dangerous people."

LabRat said...

Overheard in our office:

"Roberta sees it, she knows what to build with it. Tam sees it, she knows which end to hit someone in the head with it."

"My god. I'm a combination of two spinsters in one body!"

Tam said...

LLOL! :D

Anonymous said...

"Wow, you could really f#@$ somebody up with one of those things!"

Tam, I'm starting to suspect you and I are related somehow. We need to talk.

jf

wv: lemolo - an Italian fruit drink

RWC said...

D'oh. That was actually supposed to be a joke. When I worked building decks we would send the new guy to ask where the board benders were. I guess someone got the bright idea to make one.


And yeah, "you could really f#@$ somebody up with one of those things!"

Blackwing1 said...

My (recently deceased) Dad would occasionally send us kids out for non-existent tools. I think at various times all four of us were tasked with fetching the "board stretcher" if he cut something a little short. At 4-years-old, I went happily tooling off (snerk) to the basement to retrieve it, with no clue what it looked like.

Same thing with a double-ended punch, and the left-handed-monkey-wrench.

Anonymous said...

Left handed Luring Spanner

Stuart the Viking said...

With us it was fake car parts. We once sent my mother into town to the part store for muffler bearings.

s

Drang said...

Richard McKenna had a short story called "The Left-Handed Monkey Wrench", republished in the Naval Institute Press collection of the same title, about a Navy Artificer (in the Navy, machinists are mechanics, artificers make stuff) who got tired of being asked for a left handed monkey wrench by young boots, and made one, out of brass. It was a thing of beauty, and nigh unusable by right-handers.

Sent a kid off for a box of prop wash once, he came back with a bottle with a hand made label, "Cleaning fluid, rotor blade." Saw a kid sent for a box of grid squares once, and he came back with one gross of map reading protractors.
Those games don't always work with MI geeks...

Oakenheart said...

Yep, they thought they could get me with "Frequency Grease", I brought back a tube of relabeled Lubriplate.

Had a young man come into the shop with a burned all to hell car amp, and tell me the smoke came out of it. After a long conversation in which he displayed his superior knowledge of electronics, and then asked me "So, how are you going to fix it?" I said "Oh it's no problem, I'll just hook it up to the smoke injector and put the smoke back in." He actually bought it. ;)

Keads said...

Corrugated KiloWatts for the newbies long ago. Supply actually was in on the joke and had a crate with bricks in it labelled.

Anonymous said...

Young-un 'prentice (an eager to learn, bright kid ever so slightly dimmed that day by a wee hangover) gets sent to the tool room one Monday AM to fetch a longwait.

Ten minutes later the dude behind the cage asks him if he's waited long enough. Dooooh! Idjit!

Thankfully I only fell for it once. :-)

Wild Bill

Anonymous said...

I'd love to see the look on Tam's face when she grabs hold of one of these bad boys: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202332137/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

jf

wv: obalina - A mental picture of the POTUS that I could do without.

Old NFO said...

Those DO work in more than 'one' application of force... :-)

Anonymous said...

If I can get to the blog meet, remind me to tell you the story of a new troop everybody called Zero, sand the stuff we sent him for.

Dennis the librarian shusher

45er said...

That's got zombie apocalypse melee weapon written all over it.

Anonymous said...

Long, long ago, in another life, in a land far, far away, when I was a boot squid not long out of boot and still trying to figure out what the difference between "port" and "starboard" was, I was sent to the sail locker to get a bottle of green oil for the starboard running lights. Knowing full well they were electric, I found a comfortable place in the line ("rope" to all ya landlubbers) storage compartment and had a nice nap. The Chief was p.o.'d when I finally came back...

cap'n chumbucket

BGMiller said...

JF....
Forget your puny little bar....

Tam needs this:
http://www.stanleytools.com/default.asp?CATEGORY=FORCIBLE+ENTRY+TOOLS&TYPE=PRODUCT&PARTNUMBER=55-122&SDesc=Stanley%26%23174%3B+Fubar%26%23174%3B+Forcible+Entry+Tool+-+30%22


Or I suppose IFD might be convinced to let her have a Haligan tool.

BGM

David said...

Board bender? Isn't that when all the 2x4s go out drinkin' all night?

Cybrludite said...

I'm told that a common prank on the new OR nurses is to send them to the surgery core (basically a sterile supply room between two rows of ORs & accessible from each of them without having to re-scrub) for an Otis Elevator. Medical widgets tend to be named $_INVENTOR $_WIDGETTYPE, so it sounds like something the surgeon would call for.

WV: Paxid: ASk you doctor about Paxid. Paxid should not be taken by people who are nursing, pregnant, may become pregnant, or might possibly get someone pregnant. Common side effects include muscle & stomach pain, nausea, hair loss, depressed white blood cell count, damage to the gastrointestinal linings and bone marrow, birth defects, genetic damage, and possible death.

jimbob86 said...

Boardbender?

I've heard of a board stretcher
...... kinda like a can of track tension.....

Our BMO, after seeing his gazillionth FNG sent to the POL point looking for a "can of track tension" took a 5 gallon oil can, painted it bright orange, stenciled on "TENSION, TRACK, M3E2" a date of manufacture, and an NSN .... and a "WARNING: DO NOT ROLL- EXCESSIVE MIXING MAY CAUSE PRODUCT TO IGNITE AND/OR EXPLODE, CAUSING SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH TO PERSONNELL NEARBY" ..... He then filled it with concrete and sealed the lid with epoxy.

"You could really f#@$ somebdy up with one of those thing!"

See? Witness the violence inherent in her system!

:P

Anonymous said...

"Blinker fluid!"

Justthisguy said...

I'm surprised S.M. Stirling didn't Tuckerize Our Tam. I mean, she would have made a badass Decurion in the First Airborne Legion of the Domination of the Draka. She's even ethnically correct. Sophie Nixon ain't even in it.

Justthisguy said...

If sent for Blinker Fluid, I would of course come back with a bottle of Murine and receipt, and expect to be re-imbursed for what I paid.

WV: dogman. Nope. I'm a cat guy.