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RE: Derecho Isn't Just a City in Texas
Yeah, that's exactly the problem. I've been involved with two alarms that turned out to be real fires, and that should be enough to keep anyone on their toes, but getting those a lot can be mind numbing.
Amazingly, I cannot remember that there was ever any serious fire in the camps here in town, during the 34 years I worked there. Well, there was a bomb that went off in a accomodation block - but that doesn't need much of a fire alarm system, believe me. You're not gonna miss noticing when that happens...
And a few times guys in the workshops smoked a car by welding on it. But thats also pretty obvious and they had extinguishers ready to use quickly enough.
The only time I've seen a house really messed up was a house of a officer's family. They all went on vacation back in England over the christmas break, like 3 or 4 weeks. When they left, they thought it would be a good idea to turn the electricity off at the fuse box, to prevent a fire by malfunctioning electrics.
What they didn't think off was, that this would also turn of the heating system. Over christmas there was a severe cold spell, like -15°C for 2 weeks - and that made all the water pipes in the house burst from freezing. The whole place was totally soaked and frozen up, you could do ice skating in the living room. The family got relocated - after a severe telling off - and it took month to make the house useable again.
But the dodgy fire alarm system in the camp blocks was really annoying. And I bet it had cost a fortune as well. It wasn't just smoke alarms or stuff like that. There was lots of sensors everywhere, connected to a steel cabinet at the entrance of each block, that was full of signal lights and buttons and stuff. And those block alarms were all linked to a central alarm panel in the guard room, so they can see where the fire is, direct the fire brigade and emergency service ect.
But such complex systens can be funny. Another such system was the internal telephone sytem. When the camps were built, which was still before WW2 in the mid 1930s by the Germans, there was probably one phone in each block, and may be a few more in the headquarter block. And after the war, when the Brits moved in, they started adding more and more phones and phone lines, over the period of 60 years. At the end, there was a phone in every room, even in the basements. And in office rooms they had 6 or 8 phones in a room even.
And there was only one guy from the German Telekom who really understood how this all worked. Everybody knew him, because he had been there so often over such a long time. If he wasn't available, they were screwed. At times I saw some young guys from Telekom, desperatly running around measuring lines in switch boxes here and there, unable to figure out how this all works.
I somehow have the suspicion, the real reason behind the withdraw of the British army back to the UK was, that this Telekom guy had retired. :)
Ah, the complicated old system and the invaluable IT guy! The same in every country.
Yeah, its a bit like in the old days, when a old craftsman passes his knowledge on to the next generation. But if this knowledge is not passed on...
Speaking of passing it on, I know it's not quite the same, but I loaned my youngest daughter several of my books on writing the other day. Another novelist in the family? I'm so proud! And worried about her financial future, but mostly proud.
Well, that's nice! I didn't know writing is a genetic thing. Acting and race driving may be, but writing... :)
Beats me--art is art, I suppose, so if it's in your blood, writing counts. Stephen King's son is a writer, and Mel Brooks' son is, too--and Mel has done a lot of writing in addition to his movie work.
I didn't know about King's and Brooks' sons, but I assumed there might be some examples of writer's families, too. I guess they would rather use a different name to publish, as it may look a bit daft if the use the famous name.
In acting, there are a lot of family connections, some do use the famous name some don't. In race driving there are lots too, and since they don't have aliases its easy to see. Its quiete weird actually: where ever you look, Formula 1, Formula E, Touring Car series, NASCAR - you could think you are watching events from 25 or 30 years ago, if you see the names of the drivers. But actually they are sons, or even grand sons, of famous drivers from the 70s to 90s. And in racing there is not so much suspicion to be in it just because of the famous name - because either you can drive and win, or you can't.
Yes, I remember seeing a name in the list of drivers for this year's Indy 500 that was the same as a driver from when I saw it as a kid. Not just a kid but, I'd imagine, a grandkid.
with writing and acting it's different--you'll always have people wondering if you got a roll just because of your name. It's why I admire people like King's son, who didn't let anyone know his real name until after he had some books published.