No, Thanks

I already have a set.

Couldn't sleep, so I got up to check my reader and noticed a new posting from WikiHow, my subscription to their "How to of the Day" feed. I had to laugh because it looked like they were talking about either obtaining some incredible intestinal fortitude or making something that could only be made on an expensive and advanced lathe or milling machine.

There was another similar post from WikiHow that hit my reader while I was clearing out the rest of the posts - this one was about making Brass Ball cocktails.  The article was blank, as was the original one and I noticed that it had already been edited a dozen times.  That's the trouble with the Wiki sites, namely that anybody can edit them.  "I know that's true, I just read it on Wiki!" "Oh yeah, that's not a good source."  "Well, I know it's true because I just wrote it!"

Back when I was active in MSN Groups, the help group "Community Feedback" had a Wiki listing.  They had a description that went like this: "Community Feedback is dedicated to giving help to MSN Group managers." along with a bunch of other self-congratulatory crapola.  I used to go in and put "dubious" in front of "help" in the sentence. Petty of me, I know (some might say infantile or even passive-aggressive), but I loved to annoy them.  It was cheap entertainment.

Speaking of brass balls, I watched one of my favorite History Channel programs Saturday morning: "Heavy Metal".  The show is about all things military, but my favorites are when they highlight ships, tanks and airplanes. This program was about the B-17, one of the best U.S.bombers of WWII. One segment detailed the heavy losses incurred during the raids on the Schweinfurt ball bearing plants.

After the program was over, it made me think of ball bearings and different situations in my life involving them. One time when I was a driller on a rig I had a bearing out of the drawworks and was about to replace a couple of the small ball bearings when one of the guys who worked for me accidentally kicked it and sent them rolling everywhere.  We were down for quite a while until I could scavenge enough to replace the ones that we couldn't find.  Wasn't my fault, but guess who got the butt-chewing?  I passed it along, of course.

Thinking of the rigs - and ball bearings -  reminded me of a joke about a govt. man sent out to test the intelligence of rig workers.  He started the tests out with a roughneck, giving him three steel balls and told him to do something with them. The govt. man turned his back, but when he turned around again, the roughneck was gone.  He looked around, but couldn't find him.

Getting another three balls from his briefcase, the govt. man went to the roughneck's immediate boss, the driller, gave him the three balls and told him to do something with them.  The driller looked at the balls for a while, scratched his head and then put two balls side-by-side, then balanced one atop the bottom two.  It was a fairly difficult and ingenious feat, so the driller got a good score.

The govt. man looked around for the roughneck, but still couldn't find him so he then gave the three balls to the driller's boss, the tool pusher.  The pusher looked at the balls for just a little while, then stacked one on top of each other, nearly impossible to do...but that was why he was the tool pusher.  He got a great score from the govt. man.

About that time, the roughneck came ambling up.  "Where are those balls?" asked the govt. man. "What balls?" replied the roughneck. "Those three balls I gave you an hour ago!" exclaimed the exasperated govt. man.

"Oh, THOSE three balls." the roughneck sheepishly said. "Well," he went on "I lost one...broke another..."

"But the other one's here in my lunch box!"