And another year in the books!
30 years of cream!
In a couple of months, it will be 30 years I survived, despite the situation. Docs said that I'd never walk again, but about 3 months later, I walked out of the hospital. That was a lot of extremely hard work to get out of the hospital. It was another year and a half of really hard work before I was allowed to go back to full sea duty.
Then after about a year at my new duty station aboard an aircraft carrier, the doctor on board decided that he didn't want responsibility of me with my injuries aboard HIS ship!
Needless to say, I was fairly bitter for a while. I questioned, why me? After adjusting to civilian life, not easy at all, I settled into somewhat of a normal routine of civilian life. The questioning remained.
Things we're going reasonably well. I bought a farm and got custody of my son. Despite all that, the Navy's decision still ate at me.
Then one day, the realization of what happened to me finally made sense. The first incident was the most dramatic, but there were quite a few later that only reinforced the realization.
That first incident hit me like a ton of bricks! I have planned to go to the office in the afternoon and finish up some paperwork, but the stops in the morning took me longer to finish. So I pulled out my huge computer readout of boilers in my area that needed inspecting that were long overdue.
I was less than a mile away from this boiler I spotted that was in a high school. This was a cast iron heating boiler that was in the basement directly underneath the cafeteria. This was the insurance company's responsibility to perform a jurisdictional inspection of the boiler and certify it for operation. This was a year and a half out of date and had not been inspected.
So I called the maintenance supervisor of the school district and had him come down to my location. He was only a short distance away. He claimed that only two weeks earlier the insurance inspector had come out and inspected the boiler. And in usual fashion they did not leave any type of paperwork. That was probably because he didn't inspect the boiler!
So I had the supervisor to operate some of the safety control. One of the main safety controls, a low water fuel shut off, did not function at all. It was quite obvious that maintenance and simple testing was not performed. It was a float and chamber type device and the water leg was completely clogged.
This means that if the boiler had a low water condition it would continue to fire. The best case scenario would be that the boiler would burn down in place.
Worst case scenario would be the more continuing to fire and the water level getting lower and lower. Then for some reason it could have called for more water and got cold shot of water to red-hot CAST iron.
Water would have hit the hot cast iron, flash to steam and then the boiler would have blown up. The thermal shock and the explosion would have totally shrapneled the cast iron. It was something like a 5 million btu boiler and would have easily blasted through into the cafeteria and completely blowing up the entire building.
I immediately told the main supervisor to completely shut down the border and tag it out through their system. Well we had had a good relationship in the past, but he told me he couldn't do that. So I called the local fire Marshall and the State fire Marshall for that area and advised them other situation and what I had told me that supervisor.
It was only 2 Days later, I came upon a boiler had a cleaners that was many years out of date with them supposed to be a yearly inspection requiring opening up and disassembling the boiler to a point. When I went around the back to the boiler room entrance, there was a trail of water coming out of the boiler room. I entered the boiler room and took one quick look at the boiler and RAN! I got into my little Bronco II and made a phone call to the cleaners from several blocks away.
I told the owner he needs to shut the door down now and schedule an internal inspection as soon as possible it was not too operate the border until then. I also notified the local fire marshall.
When I had arrived for the internal inspection of the boiler, the mechanic had been there for quite a long while and still have not gotten the boiler fully prepared. I had never seen this size of motor with so much sediment in it and every single one of the hand holes have been leaking for God knows how long! While knocking all the dead rust off the pressure vessel, the more mechanic actually knocked a hole in the pressure vessel!
I had to tell the owner that is more was not salvageable with the repairs would be far more than what a new boiler would cost. When the boiler mechanic removed the boiler, it actually split where he was lifting it.
Like the school boiler, it was a headline waiting to happen! This little boiler would have taken out the entire block.
It was a day or so later when I got a call from the Chief inspector of the state, I had an epiphany after our conversation. If I had not been hurt and subsequently discharged from the Navy, they're very easily could have been a lot of children and other people killed between the two boilers.
That was the day that I realistically stop asking the question of why. Sure there are brief moments when something happens, the questioning comes back. Then better reasoning comes to the forefront! That can be difficult at times! The tree visiting my living room is a fine recent example!
It's a new year and we survived!
Do the best you can! While some may find it depressing to finally realize that you are not in charge, especially to us A-type personalities, it can help you deal with what Life deals us!
Happy New Year's everybody!
Damn! That was a long diatribe!
The goal for today is get a bath and go purchase a new laptop! I fried mine early this morning!! LOL!!!
Cats woke me up this morning slamming each other against the wall! After I realized it wasn't some intruder, I went to go pee and came back to bed. Then I heard a strange sizzling sound. Evidently I knocked over the Pepsi that I had on my nightstand which fell over on the laptop. Oh yeah it fried it good! After all the years I've had laptops since the mid-90s, I had never done that crap before! No idea how I did it but it's there.
This time I'm going to break from my Norm of mine buying really cheap laptops. And a lot of people's eyes is still a cheap laptop at, with taxes, just over $1,000
Same screen size, but much better resolution, twice as much memory, backlit keyboard, much much faster processor and a decent graphic card.
Now I'll be able to see all the pretty cannabis and a much better condition!
...
..or when we all fall over.........
and Frank 
