Random News Stories

[Leo Enticknap]

Continuing on the motoring theme:

A driver lost control and plowed into glass windows at the front of a Lake Elsinore Urgent Care Thursday, but no one was injured.

The crash happened about 11:45 a.m. at Accelerated Urgent Care, 29997 Canyon Hills Road, according to the Riverside County Fire Department.

The agency said that several engine crews were sent to the location and discovered that the vehicle had been driven into the windows adjacent to the entranceway.

There was broken glass, but the Urgent Care patients and staff escaped unscathed, as did the motorist, whose identity was not disclosed.

Firefighters found the man sitting on the curb, waiting to speak with sheriff’s deputies, according to reports from the scene.

The Urgent Care apparently remained open after the crash, which was under investigation.

In a radio report I heard (which prompted me to look for an online one to post here), it was claimed that the driver was speeding at the time of the accident, hence the irony in the name of the business he crashed into.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...owrunner-ai-tv

A new AI service allows viewers to create TV shows. Are we doomed?

Showrunner will let users generate episodes with prompts, which could be an alarming next step or a fleeting novelty

One of the key strategies of streaming services is to keep you in front of a screen for as long as possible. As soon as one episode of a show you’re watching ends, the next one pops up automatically. But this approach has its limits. After all, when a series ends, Netflix will try to autoplay another series that it thinks you’ll like, but it has a terrible success rate. Maybe the tone of the suggested show is wrong, or maybe it’s too exhausting to be dumped into the sea of exposition that a new show brings. Maybe it’s just too jarring to be pulled out of one world and dumped straight into another without any space to breathe.

You know what would fix that? If Netflix gave you the chance to automatically create a new episode of the show you were already watching. You’d stay there forever, wouldn’t you? It would be wonderful. Ladies and gentlemen, you will be thrilled to learn that this glorious technology now exists.

This week, a company called Fable Studio announced the launch of Showrunner, the world’s first AI-generated streaming service. With a prompt of just a few words, Showrunner promises to allow viewers to write, voice and animate their own television episodes.

Users who sign up for the Showrunner waitlist will eventually get to see 10 animated shows. One of them, Ikiru Shinu, is billed as a dark horror anime. Another, Sim Francisco, is an anthology show about people living in the titular city. And then there’s Exit Valley, a South Park-style Silicon Valley satire. Users can watch the episodes, or make their own by writing prompts that will be generated into scenes that can be stitched together into full episodes. For example, you can presumably watch Exit Valley and then type ‘The characters in his entertainment industry satire learn that they are part of an AI-generated content drive designed specifically to destroy the entertainment industry, and the satire explodes their heads’, and that’s what the next episode will be.

The service isn’t entirely without precedent. Last year Fable released an AI-generated episode of South Park that, if you weren’t watching very closely, came off as fairly convincing. Of course, the moment you did start paying attention, the whole thing became a kind of living nightmare. The jokes were bad, the voices were wrong and everyone spoke with the blank intonation of someone who’d recently been brainwashed into murdering you in your sleep. But it’s early days. As we’ve seen with each successive ChatGPT release, AI can improve at a frightening pace. Before long, Fable might be able to generate a South Park episode that is actually good, and then we’re all in trouble.

Clearly this could go one of two ways. The big fear – the thing that basically caused all of the Hollywood strikes last year – is that, even if Showrunner doesn’t become a mainstream success, the entertainment industry is nevertheless going to co-opt this technology wholesale. It will be slow at first: maybe a studio will use it to generate movie plots, which can then be finessed by the human experts it has to hand. But gradually that could fall away, until the entertainment industry consists of three or four executives writing AI prompts like ‘Dinosaur attacks girl with big boobs’ and keeping all the revenue for themselves.

However, based on current evidence, that isn’t likely to happen just yet. The way it looks now, Showrunner has the unmistakable air of novelty. A flood of people will initially use it to make a bunch of low-quality videos that will turn the platform into an inexplicably less human TikTok or a Quibi that isn’t quite as embarrassing to say out loud. My theory is that everyone will create their own episodes at first, and try to share them, but nobody else will watch because they’re watching episodes that they generated themselves, and then everyone will get bored because what’s the point of making something just for yourself? The bar for creation has been set too low. People will lose interest fast.

And this might be a good thing. God knows the movie industry needs all the help it can get right now. Maybe Showrunner exists as a reminder that the robots are even worse at making stuff than we are. If that doesn’t nudge us back to the mainstream, nothing will.

This whole AI thing seems to be a rocket on rails. A few years ago nobody cared, then chatgpt showed up and suddenly everybody's got an AI and it's the biggest thing since white bread.

"I want to see a movie about X and Y with a happy ending" and the machine creates a movie on the spot just for you?

[Marcel Birgelen]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...owrunner-ai-tv



This whole AI thing seems to be a rocket on rails. A few years ago nobody cared, then chatgpt showed up and suddenly everybody's got an AI and it's the biggest thing since white bread.

"I want to see a movie about X and Y with a happy ending" and the machine creates a movie on the spot just for you?

Right now, the resources to do this are just too limited and the current models aren't good enough yet. But if you look at the progress that has been made over the last few years, it's not a matter of IF, but just a matter of WHEN this happens.

We've been finetuning a bunch of open source models for about a year now and some of them have become scary good at stuff we otherwise had to do by hand.

This whole generative AI thing is like Pandora's box, the devil is outside of the box, you will not get it back in there. Even if all what we have RIGHT NOW is already peak-AI, we're in for a ride, most people simply have no idea yet. This thing will be bigger than the coming of the Internet, it will have a profound effect on the way we look at work, but everybody is still sleeping. If governments should be afraid of something, then it's how they're going to handle this, unfortunately, most politicians are completely clueless about what's coming. Maybe we should replace them with AI first?

[Frank Cox]

I'm a "computer bug" but I really don't understand exactly what AI is. That video I posted a while back has a good explanation of how a LLM can write a sentence/paragraph/paper, but I get the impression that there's a lot more to it than that.

[Frank Cox]

And here we go...

https://www.indiewire.com/news/break...ai-1235010605/

Sony Will Use AI to Cut Film Costs, Says CEO Tony Vinciquerra

The next “Spider-Verse” film may have a new animation style: AI.

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) CEO Tony Vinciquerra does not mince words when it comes to artificial intelligence. He likes the tech — or at the very least, he likes the economics.

“We are very focused on AI. The biggest problem with making films today is the expense,” Vinciquerra said at Sony’s Thursday (Friday in Japan) investor event. “We will be looking at ways to…produce both films for theaters and television in a more efficient way, using AI primarily.”

That’s about the strongest support for AI we’ve heard from a film studio head.

Vinciquerra knows how controversial his comments could be with creatives.

“We had an 8-month strike over AI last year,” Vinciquerra began his response to the first analyst question (from Nomura Securities) during his Q&A portion of the annual event. He also acknowledged that ongoing IATSE talks and the forthcoming Teamsters negotiations are “both over AI again.”

The sum total of those discussions between Hollywood’s workers and its studios will inform just how far Vinciquerra and others can go.

I've said before and I'll say again that those who believe union contracts will stop the use of AI are in the position of King Canute against the tide.

If Unionized Movie Studio can make a movie for $100 million and Non-Union Movie Studio can make a similar movie using AI for 98 cents, how long is the first one going to be able to continue operating?

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm a "computer bug" but I really don't understand exactly what AI is. That video I posted a while back has a good explanation of how a LLM can write a sentence/paragraph/paper, but I get the impression that there's a lot more to it than that.

You know, you're in good company, as OpenAI, you know, those guys and gals behind the thing called ChatGPT, doesn't know either how their shit works.

AI is a very broad concept, it has been around in one form or another for decades now, but what's catching all the hype lately is generative AI. Generative AI seems to be able to interact with humans in a much more natural way and it shows some real forms of intelligence. While this intelligence isn't the same as human intelligence, it's undeniably a form of intelligence.

The thing is, we build those giant neural networks, consisting of billions of nodes, based on the transformer architecture, we feed them with billions and billions of "information points" and at *some point* something like "intelligence" seems to emerge. Intelligence, to me, it seems, is a function of complexity and structure. Since we have no clear definition of "intelligence", it's also hard to draw a line between when something is intelligent and when something is not. It's probably also not something that can be defined by a hard distinctive line, but only by specifying something of a gradient.

I'd love to explain to you how LLMs and associated beasts work, at least the general concept behind it, but I'm a little constrained by time and forum context. Also, I'm hampered by the same shortcomings that OpenAI also faces: I can't exactly explain what causes those emerging properties of intelligence to arise, although I have some theories, partly backed by some observations we made ourselves while training those LLMs for specific tasks.

In general, we've built a brain-simulator to some extend. A combination of pure cheap processing power, memory and vasts amount of "public" information have enabled us to get here, after quite a few years of trying. While it doesn't exactly work like the brain, it's close enough for quite a few things we're trying to do with it...

[Leo Enticknap]

Two A340s smuggled out of Lithuania and into Iran

by Miquel Ros, 2024-06-23

Two Airbus A340 aircraft belonging to Gambian leasing company Macka Invest were, reportedly, smuggled out of Lithuania and into Iran.

According to reports that appeared on Lithuanian media, the two aircraft had been parked at Šiauliai airport (SQQ) in Lithuania. They managed to sneak away in February 2024 after declaring that they were departing for Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

After reaching Iranian airspace the two aircraft switched their transponders off and landed at two separate airports in the Middle Eastern country: Tehran’s Mehrabad (THR) and Chabahar Konarak Airport (ZBR).

The two A340s are believed to be currently in service with Iranian airline Mahan Air, which is under US sanctions.

A third A340 belonging to the same Gambian company was prevented from leaving Lithuania upon concerns that it may follow the same path as the other two and it remains at Šiauliai.

This is not the first time that A340 aircraft are smuggled into Iran in contravention of international sanctions.

In 2022, four A340s registered in Burkina Faso ended up in Iran after having filed false flight plans that would have, supposedly, taken them from South Africa to Uzbekistan. Just as in the more recently reported case, in that occasion all four aircraft also disappeared briefly after reaching Iranian airspace, only to be spotted shortly after at Tehran’s Mehrabad international airport.

Whatever one's views on international politics and Iran (it is not my intention to open that can of worms), one has to concede that this demonstrates serious chutzpah! Smuggling one more bottle of Scotch than your duty free allowance permits is one thing ... but knocking off jumbo jets takes it to a whole new, erm, altitude...

I'm guessing that the Iranians are collecting A340s because they are horrendous gas guzzlers that western airlines don't want, but Iran produces more oil than it knows what to do with, and so doesn't have to care about that.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.chess.com/news/view/russ...ning-her-rival

Chess Player Suspended After Allegedly Poisoning Her Rival


TarjeiJS

Updated: Aug 8, 2024, 5:20 AM | 89 | Chess.com News

A chess player has been suspended by the Russian Chess Federation and is reportedly facing time in jail after she allegedly tried to poison her rival at the chessboard during a tournament.
Amina Abakarova, a 40-year-old chess coach from Makhachkala in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, is accused of trying to poison her rival, 30-year-old Umayganat Osmanova.
The incident unfolded during the Dagestan Chess Championship on August 2, according to a Telegram channel that first reported on the story, and is now making headlines in state-run Russian news media as well as reaching global media as well.
Security camera footage shows the incident where Abakarova calmly walked over to the board where Osmanova was supposed to appear 20 minutes later. It was reported that she'd previously asked if cameras were in operation and been told that they weren't. She then smeared what is said to be potentially deadly mercury from a thermometer.

Poisoning incident in Russian ?? Chess.
Statement by the Chess Federation of Russia, video from Karjakin's Telegram: pic.twitter.com/5ePqEUMAI1
— Peter Heine Nielsen (@PHChess) August 7, 2024

Osmanova said she began feeling unwell 30 minutes later, complaining of nausea and dizziness, prompting an immediate call for medical assistance. Doctors eventually concluded that poisoning was a likely cause. After reviewing the footage from security cameras, the arbiter reported it to the police and Abakarova was detained, rtv1.com reports.
Osmanova described her ordeal, saying she felt "terrible, disgusting, and morally depressed" when she realized she had been poisoned. She said another player and a member of the organization also became ill.
"I still feel bad. In the first minutes, I felt a lack of air and a taste of iron in my mouth. I had to spend about five hours on this board. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t seen it earlier," she told Russia Today.
Amina Abakarova is suspended after she allegedly poisoned her rival. Photo: Department of Sports, Tourism and Youth Affairs of Makhachkala. Abakarova has reportedly confessed that she wanted to "knock her opponent out of the tournament," admitting "personal hostility" toward Osmanova, who had a week earlier won the Dagestan Rapid Championship above her on tiebreaks. The plan was not to harm Osmanova, but to scare her, according to a police report quoted by Russian media.
Abakarova has now been detained by police and is facing up to three years in jail, according to The Mirror. Andrey Filatov, the President of the Russian Chess Federation, has also confirmed that Abakarova is temporarily suspended from Russian chess events, pending an investigation into the incident. She is potentially facing a lifetime ban.
Dagestan's Minister of Sport, Sazhida Sazhidova, is also shocked: "Like many others, I am perplexed by what happened, and the motives of such an experienced competitor as Amina Abakarova are incomprehensible. The actions she took could have led to a most tragic outcome, threatening the lives of everyone who was present, including herself. Now she must answer for what she did by the law."
Despite falling ill, Osmanova fully recovered and continued the tournament, eventually finishing in second place and winning a prize. Abakarova was expelled after the fourth round and is unlikely to play chess again anytime soon.

[Marcel Birgelen]

In Soviet Russia, Chess Poisons You?

I guess she must be lucky she didn't fall out of a window.

[Leo Enticknap]

Once again, I'm going to have to beg forgiveness for stretching the "no politics" rule: this from the Daily Telegraph:

Covering up Churchill urinal in Chancellor’s office would cost £8k

Rachel Reeves is said to have quashed plans to screen historic porcelain over expense to taxpayer

Cameron Henderson, 10 August 2024 • 3:23pm

Rachel Reeves has been told it would cost £8,000 to cover up a urinal used by Winston Churchill in her private Treasury bathroom.

The Chancellor has been told she could not remove the 100-year-old urinal without listed building consent, as it is of “historic significance”. Even applying for approval to cover it up would take months and cost thousands of pounds.

An internal Treasury memo seen by the Financial Times said: “It is understood to be the only toilet remaining from the early years of the building and it is associated with Churchill. As such, both the toilet and urinal are of historic significance.”

Ms Reeves is the first female Chancellor in the Treasury’s 900-year history. She was reported to have been considering modernising the black-and-white tiled room, which also has a lavatory, ahead of Labour’s election victory on July 4.

But one ally of the Chancellor told the newspaper: “When she was told it could cost £8,000 to even apply for listed building consent from the council, she pulled the plug on it. She’s not going to waste taxpayers’ money.”

Ms Reeves has resorted to placing a temporary cover over the urinal, which is already blocked off by a glass panel, as civil servants look for a way to conceal it permanently, The Times reported.

An internal document from civil servants seen by the newspaper said it would require planning permission to “extend the glass panel upwards and/or provide a cover to the urinal”.

“This will be at least an 18-week process and cost in the region of £8,000 for the application alone,” the internal note said.

An alternative plan to frost the existing glass panel could also cost thousands as “it would have to be designed and custom-made due to the shape”, the document said.

Another low-cost solution Treasury figures were understood to be mulling was to partially obscure the offending urinal with a pot plant.

Ms Reeves embarked on her first major international trip, to New York and Toronto, this week in order to drum up investment in the UK and to meet women in finance.

The Treasury was approached for comment.

This a little less political:

You've got to be kitten! Adorable cat is born with FOUR ears thanks to a rare genetic mutation

The cat, named Audio, was taken in to the True Rescue shelter last month

By Shivali Best For Mailonline

Published: 06:58 EDT, 9 August 2024 | Updated: 06:58 EDT, 9 August 2024

The idea of a four-eared cat might sound like a creature from the lastest science fiction blockbuster.

But it has become a reality in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, where a feline has been born with four ears thanks to a rare genetic mutation.

The cat, named Audio, was taken in to the True Rescue shelter last month with his three other siblings.

Writing on its Facebook page, True Rescue explained: 'This kitten came into our shelter today with his 3 other siblings, and he has a rare genetic mutation having been born with FOUR EARS!

'The last kitten we were able to find research about that had 4 ears came from Turkey and was from 2 years ago.'

Audio was just 8-9 weeks old when he was brought in to the rescue centre after being discovered with his litter mates in Nashville, Tennessee.

In a video posted to its Facebook page, a staff member at True Rescue explained: 'They were found duct taped inside a box with no air holes, and a good samaritan was able to get them out, get them fed, and get them to us.'

Placing Audio on a table, they added: 'He has four ears!

'We have front-facing ear flaps and then rear-facing ear flaps.

'He is very sweet and very grateful not to be stuck in that box anymore.'

The photos and videos of Audio have garnered huge attention on Facebook, where animal lovers have flocked to the comments to express their delight.

'This is SOOO cool! I love genetic abnormalities, just fascinating. Glad he is doing well,' one user commented.

Another added: 'He's so precious! The ears remind me of Dobby, I think that would be a cute name for him.'

And one joked: 'Extra ears to ignore with.'

While cats with four ears are rare, they're not unheard of.

According to a study, published in the Journal of Heredity back in 1957, the feature is due to a recessive mutation that only affects the outer ear flaps (also known as pinnae), and not the inner-ear mechanism.

However, that study also found that many cats with the mutation also have smaller eyes, an undershot jaw, and were more inactive and lethargic.

In recent years, several four-eared felines have hit the headlines, including a Russian Blue named Midas who has amassed a whopping 344,000 followers on Instagram.

If only Audio had a fifth ear in the center of his forehead, he'd be good for the reference listening position, and be able to tune a room without having to spend half an hour putting up mics, and another half hour taking them down again. But there again, given that, being a domestic cat, he can hear nothing below around 220Hz and everything up to around 3.2KHz, maybe he wouldn't be the best judge of cinema sound anyways.

[Randy Stankey]

Well, the solution for the urinal problem is easy! Just put flowers inside it!

That's what they did at the Historical Museum, downtown, where my ex-wife used to work. The building was a 100-year old mansion that couldn't be changed. One of the downstairs bathrooms was open to the public. It was the only one that could be used as a public restroom because of handicap access rules. There was a urinal in there even though it was supposed to be a unisex bathroom. Since it was a historic building, renovations wouldn't be allowed.

The solution was to find a flower pot that fit inside and looked nice. If you didn't pay attention closely enough, you might not even notice that the flower pot was actually a urinal.

Bonus Feature: It's easy to water the flowers! Just pull the handle!

[Leo Enticknap]

Another story about hydrogen that doesn't mention the Hindenburg!

Ukraine Reportedly Turned a Hydrogen Car Into an Improvised Hydrogen Bomb
A novel use of a hydrogen fuel cell car.

Using parts from a salvaged Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, Ukrainian fighters reportedly managed to build a tiny hydrogen bomb.

As the English-language Ukrainian outlet Euromaidan Press reports, the hydrogen fuel cell at the heart of one of Toyota's unpopular Mirai models provided the power for the small explosive that successfully forced Russian forces to retreat in the border town of Vovchansk.

As the outlet notes, the Mirai had already been wrecked prior to being taken apart to build a bomb. It ended up delivering a key advantage to the defensive forces as they fought against Russians who had reportedly disrupted the Ukrainian military's electronics.

The bomb in question ended up weighing roughly 440 pounds and was deployed on the ground both because electronics had been disrupted and because, well, it was too heavy to drop via aerial drone.

The Ukrainian military managed to maneuver the salvaged bomb using a remote-controlled ground drone right up to its Russian target at a shelled factory before going "boom." The resulting damage included "powerful blast waves, fireballs, and debris," Euromaidan reports.

To be clear, we're not talking about a literal thermonuclear "hydrogen bomb" — Ukrainian forces used plastic explosives to detonate the hydrogen gas within the car's fuel cell.

As Euromaidan Press notes, fighters in the Vovchansk region have long had to improvise weaponry given their close proximity to the Russian border, which lies less than two-and-a-half miles away.

Salvaging parts from wrecked electric vehicles to turn into both bombs and drones has apparently become commonplace in the area as the town faces delays in the delivery of Western-built bombs. Aside from the novel use of the Toyota Mirai's fuel cell, the report also notes that Vovchansk fighters have also used Tesla components to build drones — including the ground drone used to deliver the DIY hydrogen bomb.

As with everything related to this conflict, these reports about the homemade hydrogen bomb suggest that the future of modern war — be it sophisticated invasion tactics like those used by the Russians or the high-tech pseudo-guerilla warfare deployed by the Ukrainians — is being written in the former Soviet Union.

Apparently there are only around three or four hydrogen car filling stations in California, so there can't be that many in Ukraine! Under the circumstances, this is about the only possible use case for these cars, I guess.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saska...open-1.7290755

1 of Saskatchewan's oldest cinemas is facing hard times

'We're still taking it day by day': owner of Orpheum Theatre in Estevan


Louise BigEagle · CBC News · Posted: Aug 16, 2024 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: August 16


The 110-year-old Orpheum Theatre is one of Saskatchewan's oldest independently owned cinemas. (Jocelyn Dougherty) One of Saskatchewan's longest-running independently owned cinemas is facing some difficulties remaining open.
The Orpheum Theatre in Estevan is having trouble filling seats. Estevan is about 200 kilometres southeast of Regina.
The 110-year-old building it isn't just a cinema — it also hosts live performances from groups like April Wine.
Jocelyn Dougherty, co-owner and operator of the Orpheum, said the theatre is important for the community.
"We create jobs, especially for teenagers. It's usually their first job. And we do attract visitors from neighbouring areas who come into the community and spend money at local businesses," Dougherty said.

Dougherty has owned the Orpheum with her husband Alan since 1998. They bought it from friends they had previously helped out at the small cinema.
She said revenue is down 60 per cent compared to 2019. She said some of the factors include the pandemic and the Hollywood writers' strike, which led to a period of fewer big movies being released.

She said more big movies are now being released, and they are hoping things will pick up in the fall and winter.

The building also needs roof repairs and new seats the original auditorium.

"We're still taking it day by day and hoping more people come back to the movies," Dougherty said.

The Orpheum Theatre opened on April 6, 1914, and has been in business ever since. (Submitted by Jocelyn Dougherty)


Wilma Mantei, president of the Estevan Arts Council, which hosts events at the Orpheum, said it has been hard getting people to concerts and other shows.

"We don't get great attendance either, but we still are doing OK," she said.

Mantei said that if the theatre closed, it would leave a hole in the community.

"They're trying really hard. The community is there, but the economy is not the greatest," she said.

Mantei said these kinds of amenities are needed in small communities looking to draw people to come live there.

"I would feel very sad [if it closed]. It would make it difficult in our community. I don't know if anybody would take over," she said.

[Leo Enticknap]

From the San Bernardino Sun:

Two men arrested after $1.5 million of marijuana found in Pinon Hills during wildfire patrol

Two men were arrested after deputies found they were in possession of more than $1.5 million of marijuana while the deputies patrolled an evacuated area of Pinon Hills on Friday, Sept. 13, amid the Bridge fire, authorities said Sunday.

The men, from Pinon Hills and Bullhead City, Ariz., were arrested on charges of conspiracy, cultivation of marijuana and transportation and sales of marijuana.

Deputies conducting security patrols around 9:21 p.m. in the 1500 block of Hollister Road — a section of Pinon Hills evacuated due to the Bridge fire — conducted a traffic stop on a Chevrolet Suburban towing a trailer with flat tires and no tail lights, according to a news release from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

During the traffic stop, deputies asked about a “strong odor of cannabis” and found about 500 processed marijuana plants in the trailer of the vehicle, the sheriff’s department said.

One of the suspects drove a second vehicle behind the SUV to act as a lookout, the sheriff’s department said.

Investigators learned of another potential marijuana grow at a home in the 1700 block of Trinity Road and executed a search warrant.

During the search, investigators said they found 700 marijuana plants and 1,300 pounds of processed marijuana. In all, officials estimate they found about $1.5 million of marijuana.

Investigators ask anyone with information to contact detectives at 760-552-6800 or the anonymous We Tip hotline at 1-800-78-CRIME or wetip.com

If that house had gone up in the fire, the effects on the emergency responders fighting it would have been, shall we say, challenging...

[Frank Cox]

A long time ago (in a galaxy far away) I was in charge of designing and building a municipal dog pound. There was a special paint to go on the floor and boy was that powerful stuff. I left a couple of guys painting the floor and went to do something else. Came back in an hour or so to see how the job was progressing and both of those guys were giggling. I told them to come outside and get some air. On his way out one of them said, "Gosh, Frank, I never knew working for the town could be so much fun."

Definitely a good thing that I came back when I did.

A friend of mine ran the swimming pool. He told me that he had a guy in spray painting the pool where he could see him from his office. Working in the deep end he got slower and slower with the sprayer until he was just standing there with the paint building up around his feet and the pool manager had to go in and drag him out. Again, a good thing that he was watching.

Stuff like that can be far more hazardous that you might think and everyone got away very lucky in both of those instances.