Maroon Seven

I'm sitting at work today, after a (not unexpected) long commute in due to the constriction of lanes because of plowed snow, and I get a call on my cell from a number that I don't recognize.

"Hi Johnny, sorry to call you at work. It's Tom H......."

"Tom H......." Flashing through the dwindling memory bank. Nametoface, nametoface, doesnotcompute.

"Maroon Seven" he says helpfully.

"What's UP Tom!" He rides a maroon colored Seven, a beautiful titanium steed, and when I'm riding on a regular basis, I see him once a week, at least. Although he and I usually see each other in silly lycra costumes with dopey looking styrofoam lids, fat old geezers (or soon to be) who just like to ride, sometimes fast. Takes a few more clicks to recognize my riding buddies, especially out of context, but it comes through.

Anyway he called for some professional advice about the worrisome pile of snow on his roof, about to get more worrisome with the abundance that is falling as I type this. He wanted to know if he should risk climbing on his roof to get as much as he could off before more piles on. I got the particulars ('60's rambler, trussed roof), and told him he was probably OK, but I'd check around with my colleague and a couple of structural engineers, as collapsed roofs tend to happen when epic snowfalls occur.

The short answer was that he has nothing to worry about until the snow gets to about 4' deep on his roof and it starts to rain. The nice thing about building codes is that they account for serious record-breaking conditions upon which to base simple life-saving design principles--in our area it's snow loads of 30 pounds per square foot for basic wood construction, and even hillbilly construction complies most of the time. OK so there were a few collapses around the region, but they were mostly flat roofs and there are exceptions to every rule, especially when you're dealing with gravity. Just look at my gut.

So of course I HAD to use my bicycle wheel analogy about trusses, in which the individual members (2 x 4 studs or 14 gauge wires) are flimsy but when integrated and properly connected and made rigid via a diaghram or tensile construction, they are incredibly strong structures that resist vertical and lateral loads very efficiently. Kind of like the Washington Redskins, though they aren't integrated or properly connected at all.

Back to Tom. He's a pretty amazing guitarist:

Speaking Spanish to an Italian...

I had one of those experiences this week conversing with an engineer about emergency generators, you know, the discussion about something you just know a little bit about with someone who knows every detail about the subject. You sort of understand, but you don't really, so you go for the big picture, but the engineer doesn't GET the big picture, as the details are what are important to them. So we end up talking at cross purposes sometimes, and simple conversations can turn difficult.

In the late spring I joined a group of musicians to jam with various stringed instruments. As I am a virtuoso with all of three chords, I usually disappear into the background pretty easily and just try to strum along, knowing that my hopeless technical deficiencies will be easily covered by the group and my somewhat healthy sense of rhythm. The only problem was that this group was much more of the folk music variety, and people were showing up with dobroes and lap steel guitars and zithers and one two-stringed thing that I had never seen nor heard before. The only other guitar in the room was a friendly dude who could finger and flat pick like nobody's business, and he talked to me about tuning down and other things I just don't really know. We weren't even through half a song when I packed it in. So some days you hear a language which sounds somewhat familiar but you just don't really understand what's being said.

I know this has nothing to do with this, but this was really freaky a coupla nights ago--while our boy Alex was getting suspended by the NHL for an inopportune knee on knee hit, two Panther teammates had an accidental altercation...