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I’m now a certified forklift operator, whatever that means. Flaming Lotus Girls organized a certification class with this OSHA certified guy. This was partially in response to Todd Blair, a member of SRL, being severely injured after the conclusion of Robodock; though a forklift wasn’t specifically to blame for his injury, I think it got us all thinking about safety in general.

And it’s not as if this certification will actually help keep anyone safe.

In order to pass, you had to score a 60% on a True/False quiz and drive the forklift around the yard without killing anyone. It’s hard to fail. The next time you see a certified forklift driver, know that they might have only scored a 61% on a True/False test.

The 30 minute video told us not to let people ride around on the forks, not to lift things that exceed the rated capacity of the forklift, not to lift things that are too big, not to drive around like a crazy person with the forks at head-height, to honk the horn before you go backwards, not to service the forklift unless you are “authorized”, and to never check a fuel tank with a lighter.

The hands-on instruction was fine. As has been said before, the way to get good with the forklift is to practice. I stuck around for a while watching the beginners and he helped them figure it out. Though no one I saw had any real trouble. It’s just a matter of familiarizing ones-self with the controls.

the $100 certification is good for 1 year. In the workplace, it will help protect employers from lawsuits if something unfortunate happens. (Note that FLG is not an employer). The instructor mentioned that he usually gets called out when OSHA came by for a workplace inspection of a company and the company called him so he could do an emergency certification class. He’d pre-date the certificates. Nice.

At least everyone found out that our forklift has a horn; it’s on the forward/reverse shifter.

If you really want a good forklift safety video, watch this and you’ll be all set. (no really, watch that video)

The best forklift training is
1 – a friend helping another friend with the controls
2 – practice

I’m on the marketing mailing list for Atlanta Hobby, a model airplane store I like. I just got this Christmas greeting that I rather appreciate. Here it is: Continue reading ‘Christmas Greetings from a Flyer’ »

Last year I was given a membership to the Exploratorium for Christmas by my aunt Dorothy. It was great fun going. I think I went 6 times or so, usually with a friend. I totally dig that place!

I haven’t renewed the membership yet… Memberships start January 1st. I think I’ll get one the next time I get the chance to go.

Charlotte went just yesterday and had a great time!

A friend of mine has a house he’d like to rent January –> May. Ping me if you’re interested and we’ll see if it might work out.

Strong preference goes to friends.

Here’s his letter…

I’m planning on being away in NYC from approximately mid-january hrough mid-may, and I would like to sublet my house for that time.

I’d like to sublet it to someone “in the family”, so to speak. Time period and amount of furnishings are negotiable (the less stuff I have to move, the better!)

Details (please forward as appropriate):

3 bdrm, 2.5 bath townhouse condo, 1350 sq. ft. I use one bedroom for
sleeping, another for my lab, another for the library. You can use it
for 1, 2, or 3 people. If you want low rent, just let me stash my junk in the
library, then it’s effectively a two bedroom.

Tippy-tippy-tip of Hunters Point, past Box Shop and Headless and the
Haunted Barn.

KICK-ASS south-facing bay view — alameda, San Mateo, SFO, all the way
past San Bruno mountain, almost to Daly City and the ocean.

All bamboo flooring

Sunny south-facing master bedroom and living room

Beautiful garden!

off street parking,
washer/dryer,
dishwasher,
alarm system,
security camera system,
home automation,
video projector
… blah blah blah …

Rent is negotiable — it costs me about $2500, but I’d be willing to
let it go for $1200 to $1500 if the deal is right (person I trust,
mostly furnished, stash my stuff in the library, etc etc…)

Call or email me for details.

Woke up and had fun before getting out of bed

Blueberry pancakes with grade B maple syrup.. the tiny blueberries from Trader Joe’s and grade B from Coomb farms in Brattleboro via Rainbow

Went to the Holiday Gifty Art Sale at the Crucible.

Went sailing with Dan Goldwater and friends. From Berkeley, around Alcatraz and back! Wonderful. Sea water, sails, good conversation, propane powered potato gun, “hey, it’s getting dark, we should turn on the running lights.” “Well, yeah, we ‘should'”. (what do you want, it’s a free boat?)

Had a great dinner with RICK and Charlotte at Everett & Jones Barbeque in Oakland.

And our evening ended with a bang when we watched a pickup truck in Oakland drive too fast around a turn in front of us roll over. We pulled over, expecting to have to call an ambulance but the kids inside were scared or whatnot and they put the truck back in gear and drove off as fast as they could

Rat Spock wished it to me (via Maura) and I wish it to you…

Happy Hanukkah!

Thanks are due to Scott Beale for posting about the Flaming Lotus Girls Calendar. I’ve been promoting it quite a bit in the last few days. In the image, you can see on the right side that I spent $105 for a 1 week all-text ad on LaughingSquid. Click-thrus seem to be good. I also bought some Google Ad-words.

And being the consummate huckster,   you can still get -your- FLG Fire Arts Calendar before Christmas. Just go to flaminglotus.com/calendar.

Charlotte was interviewed by a live internet television show called Church of the Perpetual Party when we were at the Fire Arts Festival in July. Here’s the entire show.

Interesting bits:

• Gaspo’s Chakratron at 7:20
• Dance Dance Immolation at 15:20
• interview with Charlotte and Serpent Mother footage at 23:00

It might take a while for the whole 50mb show to stream onto your computer.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Here are a couple sites that will let you download videos from YouTube to your computer. YouTube is great and all but it won’t be around forever. So that video your best friend posted of his cat playing piano…. eventually it will get lost on the interweb unless you snag it!

http://www.viddownloader.com

http://vixy.net

To download videos from other sources, like something that would normally only play in a protected stream to Windows Media Player, use Replay A/V from Applian Technologies.

I ended my job at Valley Yellow Pages a week ago. TJIC wrote to me about it and I responded…

>Did the yellow pages not end up paying that much?

Not so well. One of the clinchers happened a couple weeks ago… There was an office-wide meeting. The boss, Jesse had a bunch of numbers on the board. The first ones looked like this:
171k 91k 84k 70k 54k 53k 52k 50k… He had 13 numbers on the board in all, the last one was 40k. He told us, “I won’t say who each person is, but these are the earnings of each person in the office. Look how well you can do! I want you to do like this [pointing near the 91k] and not like this [pointing to the clump around 45k]. As he kept speaking about how much money we could make, I thought about the numbers…. 171k, That’s Tambri. She’s a Yellow Pages MACHINE. Her son had a broken arm a month ago and she told us how she was in the Emergency Room going over her Leads waiting for the bone to be set. 91k, that would be Jackie. No one knows how he gets so many contracts. No one. It’s actually a tiny bit suspicious. But hey, he’s doing well for himself.

And then there’s the rest of the pack… rather, I should say, the rest of the bell curve. You see, there are 30 salesmen in the office. First, Tambri and Jackie are the outliers. From a few seconds of mental calculations, it looked like the midpoint was about $38k. So the AVERAGE salesman in the office makes $38,000. The meeting wouldn’t have been quite so upbeat if the boss had shown the other side of the curve.

So to answer your question, no, Yellow Pages doesn’t pay that much.