Some days I feel like a twenty-five-year-old work-truck wondering which part is going to break next.
Last week was a big week for running. I clocked fifteen miles in four runs. Two five-mile runs and then two runs in one day that added up to another five miles.
This week I got hit with the cold on Monday-ish. Then my I had pain in my gluteus medius. That is the muscle the nurse aims for when she gives you a shot in the butt.
I decided to try a gentle run this morning. I gave myself permission to go slowly and to knock off early.
The great news is that the pain in my gluteus medius disappeared after a half mile, so it was not an inflamed bursa (No, not a small handgun. A bursa is a slippery sack of fluid that allows sheets of muscle to slide past each other.) but just a garden-variety sore muscles.
The good news is that I ran three miles and then walked back. This week will not go into the record books for distance but it is far better to run three miles than to sit in the recliner and get fat(ter).
Thursday, July 2, 2020
Quest: Without Warrant or Guarantee
“It is not just because you are my wife. It is because you are the only microbiologist who can manufacture the vaccine. What if you are the one-in-a-thousand who has a bad reaction. We could lose the ability to save the other 999.”
Rick Salazar agreed with John. “It is not worth it.”
Moe Pockets was more than willing to be the guinea pig. “Stuff some sauerkraut up my nose? Sure, why not. I have done weirder stuff than that...usually after losing a bet or drinking too much.”
John promised Moe a gallon of beer to try it out.
One of the positives about the VTH (Velichko, Tsai and Hallquist) method is that nothing was injected into the bloodstream. The vaccine was either swabbed or misted onto the permeable nasal membranes inside the nose.
Figuring out how to explode the individual bacteria cells had been a challenge. Unfamiliar with the VTH method and not knowing if Dr. Soo Kwan-Bae's creation expressed Ebola's unique protein sequences on the cell walls or in the cellular DNA, Dr. Sam had to figure out how to puree the cells so the nasal membrane was exposed to both.
Fortunately, there was enough power to run refrigeration. The winning combination was to centrifuge the bacteria out of the culture, then to immerse them in distilled water. Osmosis caused the cells to expand to the bursting point. Then the bacteria were flash-frozen to -20F. Ice crystals formed inside the turgid cells and punched holes through the cell walls.
Dr Sam took the bacterial soup and tried to re-culture it. This was a quality control step to ensure that all of the cells had been punctured. She was not able to bring the culture back to life, proving that all of the cells were dead.
Moe was directed to blow his nose to clear it of any mucus. Then the diluted vaccine was misted up both nostrils. The “blue” culture in one nostril and the “aqua” in the other. Then he was directed to bend over, face toward the ground and to resist the urge to sneeze or otherwise blow the dampness out of his nose.
Every organism has some percentage of "non-coding DNA". Some of it is legacy DNA that no longer activates protein sequencing. Much of it involves lost virus that collected in the cell's nucleus and has been replicated ever since.
Many evolutionary biologists speculate that the fragments of captured virus offer resistance against that very virus. For instance, when the cell dies and ruptures, releasing the replicated virus, it also releases its own cellular DNA. If that DNA is rich in the pieces of virus that the virus uses to initiate cellular entry, for instance, then the actual virus must compete with all of the little pieces.
For example, consider what would happen if a thief went into a town. He has some purloined debit cards and some skeleton keys. But suppose every lock already had a key broken off in the key cylinder and every card reader a dummy card jammed into it; that slows down the flim-flam man and exposes him to capture for a longer period of time.
Dr Soo knew all of this. She packed the Weissella koreensis chock full of non-coding, Ebola derived protein sequences which the W.k. cheerfully accepted as DNA which it replicated in future generations.
The chopped up DNA from the evacuated bacteria quickly plated out on Moe’s nasal membranes and started diffusing into his blood stream.
While the membranes that line the nostrils appears to be solid when viewed at 1X magnification, under much higher magnification they appear to be more like the surface of the ball-pit in the kiddy-play-land at your local fast-food restaurant.
And if you were unfortunate enough to drop your car keys into the pit, you would find that the balls don’t present much resistance to small objects. The relative size difference between the human cells and the strands of faux-viral bits is much greater than the difference between the balls and the car keys. The relative size is more like the balls and grains of table salt.
From there, the faux-virus entered the capillaries where B-Cells were loafing.
B-Cells are like tractors with multiple ball hitches on the receiver. First, the B-Cell tries to fit the 2” ball to determine if the surface it bumped into is human. If the 2” ball fits, the B-Cell lets the owner of the surface go on its merry way.
If any of the other balls or hooks fit, the B-Cell tractors it to a lymph node. There, the B-Cell communicates the size ball that worked and directs the lymph node to start manufacturing Roombas with the appropriate size ball and a grenade. Several lymph node cells are activated and they make a few Roombas (antibodies) and then settle back to await further developments.
At that point, a small factory has been set up and proven. The tooling is ready but there is no point in running "the factory" if no more of that particular invaders show up.
The leaders of Capiche made a strategic decision. They decided to offer the vaccine to anybody who wished to receive it. It was to be given with no warrants or guarantees.
They also decided to give the vaccine to half of the fighters who were guarding Capiche and the Buffer-Zone. If they showed no adverse reaction after the second dose, then the other half would also receive the vaccine.
Based on what Sally Straeder had remembered, the vaccines were to be administered on two-to-four week intervals until an immune response was detected. The immune response most likely to be detected was the lymph nodes below the jaw becoming hard and perhaps painful.
The leaders opted for the two-week schedule as long as very few adverse reactions were noted and Dr Wilder had vaccine available.
The first dose would build "the factory" and set up the tooling. The second and later doses were to trick "the factory" into cranking out massive amounts of antibodies that would Roomba-kaboomba the Ebola virus.
Next
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
What authors are you reading now?
We live in crazy times.
One way to deal with the STOOPID is to go back and read authors whose work can be relied upon to give us enjoyment.
This is more than sticking our heads in the sand. By depriving the hooligans of their fifteen minutes of fame we are taking the oxygen out of the room.
I will get the ball rolling.
I thought W.E.B. Griffin's book "The Lieutenants" was one of the finest pieces of fiction ever written. The later books in the series were also superb.
I like the books John Ringo wrote. The ones he wrote without a co-author seem to be better than the others.
Rolf Nelson's Heretics of St Possenti is superb and I wish he would expand the franchise.
Marco Kloos's Palladium War series is a cut above average.
Jim Curtis's Rimworld is a fun series. The characters seem less constrained than some of his other work (also good stuff).
The earlier books of the Monster Hunters International series by Larry Correia were a joy to read. A common thread in a "franchise" is that later books seem more forced while earlier books seem more free-flow as we discover the rules of the new universe. It is presumptuous of me to critique an author who is 10X the writer I am but it is the realities of writing a series that goes beyond three books.
The books that Tom Clancy wrote (without co-authors) are very, very good.
I will even admit to reading a romance novel or two in my life. The Chicago Stars books by Susan Elizabeth Philips were richly layered and elaborately constructed confections. Later books were churned out at six month intervals as her editors put the spurs to her.
Debbie Macomber had a short series where the angels "Shirley", "Goodness" and "Mercy" would come to earth around Christmas and cause chaos and romance. They were good, goofy fun.
Expand my horizons. What are you ladies and gentlemen reading?
One way to deal with the STOOPID is to go back and read authors whose work can be relied upon to give us enjoyment.
This is more than sticking our heads in the sand. By depriving the hooligans of their fifteen minutes of fame we are taking the oxygen out of the room.
I will get the ball rolling.
I thought W.E.B. Griffin's book "The Lieutenants" was one of the finest pieces of fiction ever written. The later books in the series were also superb.
I like the books John Ringo wrote. The ones he wrote without a co-author seem to be better than the others.
Rolf Nelson's Heretics of St Possenti is superb and I wish he would expand the franchise.
Marco Kloos's Palladium War series is a cut above average.
Jim Curtis's Rimworld is a fun series. The characters seem less constrained than some of his other work (also good stuff).
The earlier books of the Monster Hunters International series by Larry Correia were a joy to read. A common thread in a "franchise" is that later books seem more forced while earlier books seem more free-flow as we discover the rules of the new universe. It is presumptuous of me to critique an author who is 10X the writer I am but it is the realities of writing a series that goes beyond three books.
The books that Tom Clancy wrote (without co-authors) are very, very good.
I will even admit to reading a romance novel or two in my life. The Chicago Stars books by Susan Elizabeth Philips were richly layered and elaborately constructed confections. Later books were churned out at six month intervals as her editors put the spurs to her.
Debbie Macomber had a short series where the angels "Shirley", "Goodness" and "Mercy" would come to earth around Christmas and cause chaos and romance. They were good, goofy fun.
Expand my horizons. What are you ladies and gentlemen reading?
Sanctuary
Sanctuary, as it applies to pest control in the garden, is a strategy to ensure that a large percentage of the pest population remains naive to your pesticides or control methods of choice.
For example, suppose you use the popular pesticide Sevin (Carbaryl) to control Colorado Potato Beetles.
Sevin, when it works, works very, very well. But Colorado Potato Beetles rapidly develop resistance to it.
"Sanctuary" involves deliberately not spraying some heavily infested potato plants when you are spraying your garden.
"WHAT!" you exclaim. "Won't they just lay eggs and you will be faced with a second generation?"
True enough. But it will be a second generation that is naive to Sevin.
It is better to let 95% of the beetles that survive to reproduce to be not-resistant rather than to have 100% of the beetles that survive to reproduce to have some, qualitative resistance to Sevin.
As long as the genes that produce resistance are recessive or incur significant metabolic disadvantages, it is unlikely that most of the beetles will manifest resistance to Sevin.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
"Sanctuary" is very different mind-set than the "Farm as pretty as a calendar cover" goal. It is also different than what Ag Chemical companies promoted until very recently.
They wanted to sell a lot of product. They wanted you to carpet-bomb your crops and farm animals.
But now the thinking is shifting. If you have a herd of cattle, for instance, and only 20% of them have clinical symptoms of worms, then treat the 20% and then cull them when you have a market for them.
There are genetic components to resistance to worms within farm animals. Keep and breed the ones that exhibit resistance. Sell the others.
The ones without symptoms will still have a worm load. They will still drop viable eggs on the pasture. But it is within the bounds of what the dynamic ecosystem can absorb.
The risk of carpet-bombing with an worming medicine is that you will eventually encounter a stressful year when even your animals that are not predisposed to worms get symptoms. It might be the year when it rains every day for two months strait.
If you carpet-bombed the previous fifteen years, then your medicine of choice will not be very effective. You will lose animals. You will lose money.
If you exercised some kind of sanctuary strategy, then your worming medicine of choice will likely work very well.
Potato bugs
Tomorrow I will spray my potato plants. I have a ten year-old bottle of Sevin of dubious potency. I will skip three infested plants per row.
I also have issues with Japanese Beetles in the grapes. Japanese Beetles love grapes. Sanctuary is easier with Japanese Beetles because there are so many wild species they eat that are never sprayed. There is no shortage of naive beetles diluting resistant genes.
She should ask for her money back
 |
| "caucasity"? Really? |
Threatening to stab "anyone" on social media is strong evidence of premeditation. Stabbing people often results in their death.
She lists in New Haven, Connecticut as her city of residence. Connecticut was the first state to implement a "Red Flag Law" in 1999.
I think this unstable person needs a visit from the New Haven SWAT team and her firearms, knives, screwdrivers, nail file, pens and pencils, keys, tire iron in her vehicle need to be removed.
Just saying, she is EXACTLY the kind of person Connecticut wrote their law to protect productive, tax-paying Connecticuttians from.
***Update***
The prima dona who threatened to cut anybody who said "All Lives Matter" within her hearing had her job offer from Delloitte rescinded.
Par for course, she blames the management of Delloitte. It has nothing to do, in her mind, with protecting other employees from somebody who publicly threatens carnage.
Good move Delloitte. You did the right thing. Much easier to jerk the job offer now than after she has worked a year or five years. No telling how many executives she would have stabbed because she imagined some slight or how many law suites she would have filed or how many Tic-Toc videos assassinating your corporate character.
Grab bag
The image that won the Internet for today. I stole it from Dad's Deadpool Blog. It is a must-read site and a great way to start the day.
Colds
Maybe this cold isn't all "downside".
Revenge? Really?
More proof that the world lost its collective mind.
An opinion editor at a major, national newspaper informed white women they were "lucky" that Blacks were not extracting revenge for...two items that happened before most of them were born and....voting for Trump.
My guess is that she (the editor) is just another ding-bat who lost her collective mind over the collective excitement and trying to be relevant in the collective insanity.
What a buffoon! If she opens the door for one side extracting "revenge" for voting for a candidate they don't like, doesn't tit-for-tat indicate that the other side will return the favor? Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, but I bet she still has her cushy job.
Bernard's Law of Half-wits applies. CI=(1/2)^n where CI is the Collective Intelligence and n is the number of half-wits.
Foxes
We have a den of foxes on the property. I saw the cubs playing when the grass was soaked with dew. I guess they don't like wet feet. They were up, out of the ground clutter where I could see them. I counted three cubs but there may be more.
I consider this grand, good fortune. I might have a different opinion if I was raising hens. The fox will thin out the rabbit and chipmunk population. Hopefully, there will be fewer ticks next year.
Pretty animals. These seem to have shorter legs and longer bodies than I remember but maybe it is due to their youth.
Road trip to Flint today
Belladonna has to go to Flint to pick up a lab experiment from her instructor. This is the class she is taking from Kirtland Community College. KCC is based in Grayling with campuses in Roscommon and Gaylord. Flint is much closer than any of those cities but I think I would rather drive to Roscommon than Flint.
Maybe I can find a sporting goods store to swing by. I will run out of H-110 in a few days. I have Alliant 2400 which is a fine propellant but I don't want two different loads that look physically the same but shoot to two different points-of-impact.
Zuckerberg
I am a rich man when I can feel pity for a billionaire.
I feel sorry for the guy. It never occurred to him that the crowd would turn on him. He is the only guy in Silicon Valley that showed any backbone when it came to censoring hate-speech.
Sure, there was some censoring on Facebook and the execution was crap. Maybe that is why Mr Zuckerberg resisted. He knows that human intervention is fallible...and expensive.
I believe that if Mr Zuckerberg wanted to drink an adult beverage with me, that I would not spit in his face. Not an opinion I share regarding most of our would-be masters.
Words
What is the attraction of the words "horrid" and "wonderous"?
Is something more repulsive if it is "horrid" rather than "horrible"?
Is something more awe-inspiring if it is "wonderous" rather than "wonderful"?
I am open to suggestions. Maybe I have been using "wonderful" and "horrible" wrong. Perhaps "horrid" and "wonderous" are the preferred forms when modifying verbs or some such. If I have been in error, please let me know.
Quest: Pencil Whipping
Gilmour Hendry had his ass-in-a-crack, big time.
Gilmour was smooth-talking, urbane and handsome. He was also adverse to hard work.
He had been given a daily progress check-sheet to fill out. Rather than checking every item, he foisted it off on one of the crackers with grease beneath his fingernails, some joker named Thibodeaux.
Thibodeaux tried to tell Hendry that he was not a cracker but a coon-ass, but Hendry gave him discipline for making a racial slur and still made him fill out the check-sheet.
How could anybody use the word “coon” in the two-thousands was beyond Hendry’s ability to understand.
Thibodeaux filled out the check-sheet. He checked everything as “On-Target”.
Hendry signed and dated it and turned it in. He didn’t give it a second thought.
Hendry’s supervisor was delighted. The project had been seriously behind but now was back on track. Clearly, the "wrong kind of people" had been in charge but that had been fixed.
Hendry’s supervisor was supposed to perform two reviews a week where she verified Hendry’s reviews, but since the reviews were back-on-track she decided to pencil whip the reviews and use the time to catch up on her other paperwork.
The supervisor’s boss was Gretchen Wokes-Cold. She had absolute confidence in her hand-picked underlings and skipped her weekly review. She signed off that everything was on track.
Except it wasn’t.
Wokes-Cold had pushed the rapid bridge deployment into the master requirements and therein lay the problem.
Repeated attempts had proven that the bridge design was exquisitely sensitive to variation in the four points of contact. The points had to be absolutely level and in-a-plane. Any variation resulted in the stabilizing spars matchboxing, the sections collapsing and the bridge dropping into the drink with the load.
The fix had been to install hydraulic levelers on the far end. Shortly before touch-down, laser measurements were taken to the surface, the levelers extended to proper distance and the last few feet of unfolding completed.
Wokes-Cold’s now-official requirement was that the bridge unfold and deploy in less than sixty seconds. With the hydraulic levelers the bridge took over ten minutes to first off-load from the top of the ladder truck and then open up like a step-ladder until the two “legs” were horizontal and locked.
The hydraulic pump and the vast amounts of hydraulic fluid were the limiting factors.
The shit hit the fan when Hendry’s boss showed up to perform her first bi-weekly review after missing two weeks. It was clear from Hendry’s ineptitude that it was the first time he had ever performed the audit.
Hendry’s boss gave him a public ass-chewing. She was livid. Not only was Hendry’s career on the line, so was Hendry’s boss's.
Hendry was beside himself. He knew that Wokes-Cold would cheerfully eviscerate him. He heard what happened to to Karl Mankey. Gilmour was not a mud and mosquitoes kind of guy. He liked his comforts. He liked the pretty ladies. He liked staying alive.
He did the only thing that made sense to him. That crakka-ass, Thibodeaux got him into this problem. The crakka-ass would get him out.
Thibodeaux was thoughtfully savoring a cigar on the sunny side of the maintenance barn when Hendry found him. Cigars were forbidden in Washtenaw County. Hendry pretended to not see it.
The best defense is a strong offense. Hendry said “You fucked up. You said the program was on-track. You got all of managment’s tit in a wringer.”
Thibodeaux worked the cigar around to the other side of his mouth, pulled in a mouthful of smoke, savored it for a few seconds and expelled it. The dense cloud came very close to Hendry’s face. Deep in Hendry’s subconscious, a note was written, “Some forms of intimidation are ill-advised when the subject is smoking a cigar.”
“Wahl, you gimme dat piece o paper and tell me to fill it out. I be done with all the items on MY daily list. So that be what I done fill out on the paper” Thibodeaux drawled.
Hendry never knew if Thibodeaux was playing him with the hokey eBonics or not. Hendry decided to let it pass.
“The bridge has to unfold faster” Hendry demanded.
“You mean like NASCAR faster?” Thibodeaux asked.
“Hell ya” Hendry said. That was it. He just had to speak a language this dumb-ass could understand.
Thibodeaux suddenly looked downcast. “You know, winning NASCAR teams bend the rules.”
“Making that bridge unfold faster, we might have to shave a little bit here-and-there on the rules” Thibodeaux said.
Hendry was not a poker player. The relief lit up his face.
“Do what you have to do. Just don’t put anything in writing” Hendry said.
Thibodeaux already had a plan. The specifications required that the bridge could be pulled up and redeployed elsewhere. All of the hydraulics were sized to lift the “cheerleader doing the splits” off the floor and back onto the truck.
The fix was to run a cable from the top of the cheerleader, across a pulley on a gin-pole on the ladder truck and thence to a drum===>then a transmission===>then a viscous coupler. Gravity pulled the cheerleader into the split. The viscous coupler slowed it down. A gang of brakes stopped the bridge just before it touched down on the other side so the heights could be measured and the levelers deployed.
Furthermore, Thibodeaux removed lots of extra weight. He removed the mechanical locking system for the levelers. The spool valve would keep the hydraulic levelers in position long enough for the brass to approve the design.
The buy-off by the Brass involved painting a broad, blue stripe across the pavement to represent the West Branch of the Red Cedar River.
The ladder truck screeched to a halt just short of the river, the inertia of the sudden stop assisting the four-bar linkage that transferred the bridge from the top of the truck to the vertical, folded-step-ladder position.
Thirty-seven seconds after the truck came to a quivering stop, the bridge was down and locked.
A fork truck that had been pre-staged gently placed a load in the center of the span, validating its structural integrity.
Wokes-Cold was promoted. An order was placed for 12 copies of the prototype.
None of the brass was around when four fork-trucks were required to fold up the bridge and place it back on the ladder truck.
Two of the fork-trucks lifted on the center of the span while two more pushed from the far end. Notably, all four trucks had to drive across the blue paint at some point in the evolution.
Next
Gilmour was smooth-talking, urbane and handsome. He was also adverse to hard work.
He had been given a daily progress check-sheet to fill out. Rather than checking every item, he foisted it off on one of the crackers with grease beneath his fingernails, some joker named Thibodeaux.
Thibodeaux tried to tell Hendry that he was not a cracker but a coon-ass, but Hendry gave him discipline for making a racial slur and still made him fill out the check-sheet.
How could anybody use the word “coon” in the two-thousands was beyond Hendry’s ability to understand.
Thibodeaux filled out the check-sheet. He checked everything as “On-Target”.
Hendry signed and dated it and turned it in. He didn’t give it a second thought.
Hendry’s supervisor was delighted. The project had been seriously behind but now was back on track. Clearly, the "wrong kind of people" had been in charge but that had been fixed.
Hendry’s supervisor was supposed to perform two reviews a week where she verified Hendry’s reviews, but since the reviews were back-on-track she decided to pencil whip the reviews and use the time to catch up on her other paperwork.
The supervisor’s boss was Gretchen Wokes-Cold. She had absolute confidence in her hand-picked underlings and skipped her weekly review. She signed off that everything was on track.
Except it wasn’t.
Wokes-Cold had pushed the rapid bridge deployment into the master requirements and therein lay the problem.
Repeated attempts had proven that the bridge design was exquisitely sensitive to variation in the four points of contact. The points had to be absolutely level and in-a-plane. Any variation resulted in the stabilizing spars matchboxing, the sections collapsing and the bridge dropping into the drink with the load.
The fix had been to install hydraulic levelers on the far end. Shortly before touch-down, laser measurements were taken to the surface, the levelers extended to proper distance and the last few feet of unfolding completed.
Wokes-Cold’s now-official requirement was that the bridge unfold and deploy in less than sixty seconds. With the hydraulic levelers the bridge took over ten minutes to first off-load from the top of the ladder truck and then open up like a step-ladder until the two “legs” were horizontal and locked.
The hydraulic pump and the vast amounts of hydraulic fluid were the limiting factors.
The shit hit the fan when Hendry’s boss showed up to perform her first bi-weekly review after missing two weeks. It was clear from Hendry’s ineptitude that it was the first time he had ever performed the audit.
Hendry’s boss gave him a public ass-chewing. She was livid. Not only was Hendry’s career on the line, so was Hendry’s boss's.
Hendry was beside himself. He knew that Wokes-Cold would cheerfully eviscerate him. He heard what happened to to Karl Mankey. Gilmour was not a mud and mosquitoes kind of guy. He liked his comforts. He liked the pretty ladies. He liked staying alive.
He did the only thing that made sense to him. That crakka-ass, Thibodeaux got him into this problem. The crakka-ass would get him out.
Thibodeaux was thoughtfully savoring a cigar on the sunny side of the maintenance barn when Hendry found him. Cigars were forbidden in Washtenaw County. Hendry pretended to not see it.
The best defense is a strong offense. Hendry said “You fucked up. You said the program was on-track. You got all of managment’s tit in a wringer.”
Thibodeaux worked the cigar around to the other side of his mouth, pulled in a mouthful of smoke, savored it for a few seconds and expelled it. The dense cloud came very close to Hendry’s face. Deep in Hendry’s subconscious, a note was written, “Some forms of intimidation are ill-advised when the subject is smoking a cigar.”
“Wahl, you gimme dat piece o paper and tell me to fill it out. I be done with all the items on MY daily list. So that be what I done fill out on the paper” Thibodeaux drawled.
Hendry never knew if Thibodeaux was playing him with the hokey eBonics or not. Hendry decided to let it pass.
“The bridge has to unfold faster” Hendry demanded.
“You mean like NASCAR faster?” Thibodeaux asked.
“Hell ya” Hendry said. That was it. He just had to speak a language this dumb-ass could understand.
Thibodeaux suddenly looked downcast. “You know, winning NASCAR teams bend the rules.”
“Making that bridge unfold faster, we might have to shave a little bit here-and-there on the rules” Thibodeaux said.
Hendry was not a poker player. The relief lit up his face.
“Do what you have to do. Just don’t put anything in writing” Hendry said.
Thibodeaux already had a plan. The specifications required that the bridge could be pulled up and redeployed elsewhere. All of the hydraulics were sized to lift the “cheerleader doing the splits” off the floor and back onto the truck.
The fix was to run a cable from the top of the cheerleader, across a pulley on a gin-pole on the ladder truck and thence to a drum===>then a transmission===>then a viscous coupler. Gravity pulled the cheerleader into the split. The viscous coupler slowed it down. A gang of brakes stopped the bridge just before it touched down on the other side so the heights could be measured and the levelers deployed.
Furthermore, Thibodeaux removed lots of extra weight. He removed the mechanical locking system for the levelers. The spool valve would keep the hydraulic levelers in position long enough for the brass to approve the design.
The buy-off by the Brass involved painting a broad, blue stripe across the pavement to represent the West Branch of the Red Cedar River.
The ladder truck screeched to a halt just short of the river, the inertia of the sudden stop assisting the four-bar linkage that transferred the bridge from the top of the truck to the vertical, folded-step-ladder position.
Thirty-seven seconds after the truck came to a quivering stop, the bridge was down and locked.
A fork truck that had been pre-staged gently placed a load in the center of the span, validating its structural integrity.
Wokes-Cold was promoted. An order was placed for 12 copies of the prototype.
None of the brass was around when four fork-trucks were required to fold up the bridge and place it back on the ladder truck.
Two of the fork-trucks lifted on the center of the span while two more pushed from the far end. Notably, all four trucks had to drive across the blue paint at some point in the evolution.
Next
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