Sunday, June 21, 2009

Happy Father's Day, More Friday-Shootout

First of all, Happy Father's Day

Secondly, I had three other things I was going to add to Friday's Hometown Shoot Out Metal theme but was either too busy, too scramble-minded, or -- and I just forgot the other thing -- but I never added them, so this below is a kind of a postscript to Friday.


A stain on the barbecue grill

This last one, above, does deserve a little explanation. It is the section of hydraulic hurricane doors at Charleston Center where I work. I don't usually write about work despite the fact I would love to write a book on it. But the book would have to be published posthumously.

However the hurricane doors are interesting. Charleston Center is a wonderful alcohol and drug treatment facility that includes 44 beds on the fourth floor for inpatients. When it was built 12 years ago, a great deal of attention was paid to the hurricane risk the building presented being close to the ocean and it was designed to handle a large storm surge. Two huge, hydraulic doors were designed for the front and back doors. They have only been used once when we were threaatened by Hurricane Floyd which, thankfully, move up the coast and we avoided a major hit. (Regrets to Wilmington, NC!!).

The County's facilities management folk come in with small forklifts, move them from under the stairwells (where the detail above was shot), put them in place in special seals on the doors, and after making sure the building is totally empty, they use air pressure to make them watertight and the building is sealed up tight until the threat is done.

This year, since they haven't been used for awhile, I asked to have them tested before the hurricane season was on us. Facilities management came out and then called me to say that it wasn't necessary.

After all the careful planning, design, expensive construction and installation -- and after even using them for Floyd -- some practical-minded person finally noticed after 12 years that Charleston Center has a huge side door off the childcare area on the side. We have two state of the art hurricane doors but we have three entrances.

Since we are government (don't get me started...) my guess is that when the building was being built the third door was cut as a budget-saving concession.

Next week, maybe I should go and count the number of tires on our fleet vans to make sure each one has four.

_________________________________________

Okay...I've now got the first period of time, a couple of hours, I've had in a while and am going to go and look at what everyone else did on Friday's shoot-out. Sorry I've been absent.


15 comments:

  1. Just a minor oversight, Mark. I mean, counting to 3 is a difficult task for government, without the involvement of committees and consultants.

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  2. Oh, and Happy Father's Day guy!!

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  3. Happy father day, and nice photos. :)))

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  4. The stain I thought an egg on your car tyre. The first two images are fabulous. Sorry, but my pick would be the boiler(?). That is out of this world - or looks as though it is!

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  5. The stain has nice hues!! so artistic!
    Happy Father's Day!!

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  6. LOL! Leave it to the government! Sheesh!

    Love the pics! The top one in particular - great colors!

    Happy Fathers Day to you and to your son! I hope that you each have a quiet, relaxing day. Unless of course you choose to have a chaotic one. In which case....

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  7. So the top photo is what...your water community water tank?

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  8. Beautiful baby and proud papa there.

    Who else but you would mix a Father's Day photo with left over photos from a shoot about metal.

    Kind of like making a gourmet meal and throwing some cold leftover meatloaf on the table as a side dish.

    I was hoping for a long story about your dad. What an interesting person he was.

    I like the stain on the grill.

    Happy Father's Day to you and all the other father's in your life!

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  9. actually very interesting story about the doors. about 7 years ago we had a tropical storm come through houston, circle around and come back through, and the whole of downtown and the med center flooded. as the underground parking flooded the cars down on the bottom level started to float and to bang around in the currents, breaking through the walls between the parking and the tunnel system under all of downtown, they ended up with a river running through the tunnels wiping out elevators, escalators, air systems and electricty city wide... wow long story ---- they have now installed doors simular to these throughout the tunnel system - trying to limit the damage the next time (we are sure) it floods. take a collection and have the citizens buy the missing door.

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  10. Government Schmovernment. Now, about that stain on the BBQ . . .

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  11. I love the hand prints. Awwwwwww......... Happy Fathers' Day! The pie sounded yummy, chocolate and peanut butter! The first metal add on thing looks like R2D2 on Krypton. What is it? Then you have a stain on your BBQ and 2 protective doors for 3 openings. Hmmmmmm......... The stain looks like a devil fishing..... friend of Bagmans? Do you need to have a charity walk or dance or something to raise money for the other door? Doesn't FEMA look after that?

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  12. happy Father's Day to you!

    Thanks for sharing your metal photos. I like the barbecue grill most!

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  13. belated happy father's day!
    ~AM

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  14. That's a sweet 1st picture you posted there. Proud moment.

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