Offices

I don’t make a habit of bringing a camera to work but we jsut got new iMacs at work that have built in iSights. So here is a few of my office from my computer. So if you ever send a tape to the Planet’s Funniest Animals this is where they end up.

Photo 11.jpg

I’ve brought my camera to work a few times… I run 5 of these (part time, I did full time on them a year ago, but I’m going to school now), this is the oldest one (built ~1926 as far as I can tell), and it’s kinda cool because it’s a wooden elevator (all but one of the other four are concrete and much more modern), I may have pictures of them somewhere.

Man, that’s a common sight around these here parts, deep in the vast barren wastelands of corn and soybean in northern Illinois. I don’t know the age of the elevators in the area but some of them are pretty old. Young or old though, I love the farm country. Farmtown U.S.A. sure is a different life than in the suburbs.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I think the pic is quite attractive.

Mary wants to know if we trained our pet to ride a unicycle, would we make the show?

As long as your pet isn’t a monkey, and as long as the pet doesn’t look stressed by the activity. Animal Planet are real sticklers for that. As hilarious as it is to put double-stick tape on the bottom of a cats foot, they just won’t show it on television.

Bruce, do tell us about the picture of the Pentagon… it looks like it’s got a bunch of little handwritten messages about the frame. Was this from your last job, General Yoopers? Can you even tell us about it, or is that part of your life classified?

Bruce, what exactly do you, being a building inspector?
I mean like Health Code stuff, or…other…stuff
It took me an entire minute to find what was wrong with those bricks :frowning:

I was enlisted in the Air Force from 1982 to 1986 and spent my entire military tour at the Pentagon. I separated to finish my college education. The signatures are from all my co-workers bidding me the best in civilian life.

Very simply, I am a building official and code enforcement officer for new construction and reconstruction. We issue building and construction permits for both residential and commercial projects then follow up with prescribed inspections to ensure the project adheres to applicable building codes. We enforce codes in building, fire, electrical, existing building, accessibility (handicapped), property maintenance, planning and zoning, life safety and other codes.

Edit: The BTK killer performed a similar function in his town, except he only dealt with property maintenance and animal control issues.

Actually, my question was more of an inside joke than anything else. My wife, Mary, doesn’t ride. She says that when I teach the dogs to ride, she’ll learn. :slight_smile:

You can kinda see a yellow one in behind it, that is another one of our elevators, it was built in 1908. It scares me though, so I try not to ever go in it if I can help it. They’re gonna tear it down this summer as soon as they empty it. I think if they were to try to fill it up next harvest it’ll tip over on its own.

The one in the pic may be the slowest of the 5, but it’s definitely one of my favourites, partially because it’s in pretty good shape for its age and just because it’s old, wooden and just has character.

Just for fun I put my car on the scale (which we don’t use, we have a digital scale in one of the other elevators just down the row that we use for everything)…

And here’s how much it weighs in metric tons:

One of the local elevators and grain dryers erected a block wall last year with two yard concrete blocks to contain the corn until they could run it through the dryer. Our local precast concrete plant in town makes the blocks with leftover concrete. I guess the wall was somewhat hastily designed because it gave way and there was corn everywhere, even out to the edge of the highway. Wish I had taken a picture. This year they’ve really fortified the wall and so far it’s held.

Those elevators do have a lot of character. I love 'em. There is a lot of very old wood in some of them.

I’m not sure I could do that…just making sure people do stuff right all day like that would bore my eyes out…
I am planning on going into architecture as a career path, so I guess I’ll have to learn to live with you types