X - Y = X.... no, Y.... no, X + Y!

Last week, I typed up an account of an incident with one of my Malaysian enemies, but was thrown out of the library to make room for a computer class before I had a chance to finish it. At the bottom of the post entry page, there is a button marked "Save Now", so I clicked on it. I'm looking around and I don't see a "Recover Saved Posts" button, so I'm wondering if Sister knows how to find my saved post. It's too long to re-type.

Last week, I saw a little girl at the apartment complex wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet to ride her bicycle around in front of her apartment. I doubt if she ever went more than thirty yards from her door, and she certainly wasn't going fast enough to hurt herself. I find this sort of thing pathetic -- we're raising a nation of wimps and cowards.

Have you see the ads for the live-action "Transformers" movie? When that came on my TV Sunday night, I just burst out laughing -- the bastardized remakes of "Starsky & Hutch", "Dukes of Hazzard", and such are bad enough, but now they're so hard up for ideas that they're recasting an old TOY CONCEPT from the early 80's as an "Independence Day" -style apocalyptic alien invasion? This one ought to be really fine do-it-yourself MST3K material when it comes out on DVD.
I imagine it was a photo finish in the Hollywood greenlighting process between this and a movie about the Care Bears re-imagined as a race of vicious half-man/half-beast creatures living deep in the Amazon jungle.

So, I'm in the workshop back at school one day in about late March 2001. The question which has arisen is "how much does our human-powered vehicle weigh?" You might think this isn't particularly important, but remember that we have to at least PRETEND to have 'engineered' this thing, which means handing in pages of calculations showing that we (or rather, I) know how to figure bending stresses and such, and have the necessary judgement (again, that pretty much refers only to me) to make sensible assumptions and conclusions. Some of those calculations will require a semi-accurate weight.

You're thinking "put it on a scale", but the problem with that idea is that this thing is something like nine feet long, and the only scale we have is about one foot by two. Setting it up on end isn't feasible at this point, either. The Malaysians have actually shown some interest in solving this problem, with suggestions ranging in absurdity from "put each wheel on the scale independently and then try to derive a weighted average" to "hang a pulley from the roof, turn the scale upside-down, suspend the vehicle, and tie the other end of the rope to the scale and see how hard it pulls up". Incidentally, the roof is about thirty feet over our heads, and although the Malaysians speak Chinese, none of them have displayed any of that "Crouching Tiger"-style ability to run up walls.

Eventually, I get bored with listening to them argue with MacGyver about the impracticality of their suggestions. I shove the scale under the vehicle, step over the siderail onto the scale, and deadlift the entire vehicle. So I'm standing here on an unsteady scale (it has those little swiveling caster wheels) holding up this very awkwardly-shaped and poorly-balanced contraption, which is made of square tubing with rather sharp corners digging into my fingers, saying "Read the scale. Somebody read the scale!"

Second of Three points out that this reading won't help, because it's 'vehicle + man' and we only want the weight of the vehicle. By this stage of the project, I'm pretty much constantly angry and have chronic stress-induced stomach pains, so my patience is not at its best -- I begin yelling at him. MacGyver, who clearly understood immediately, is trying not to laugh. Third of Three, who has been showing signs of being afraid of me for a while now, hurries over and reads the scale.

First of Three now picks up on Second's argument that this figure is totally useless to us. I drop the vehicle to crash loudly against the floor, and demand that Third read the scale again. First and Second begin to lecture me about how we don't need to know how much I weigh. Third gives me the reading for my weight, and I demand that Second subtract the smaller number from the larger. He ignores me, continuing to repeat how what we really need is a scale that can weigh the vehicle, and that I'm just wasting time trying to find out whether my diet is working.

Finally, I yell at him to shut up, and I explain very simply and directly that (vehicle + man) - man = vehicle. He gets it on about the third try, then they all walk away chatting in Chinese, no doubt talking about what an asshole I am.