Re: Leaks

1

GAH. This kind of thing. Don't forget the rocket they lost in 2013 because the vital "which way is up" sensors (yes, really) were installed upside down, causing the rocket to think that up was down and down was up, with results which should be obvious even to those of us with only rudimentary training in aerospace engineering.

The problem was that the sensors were designed so that it was merely very difficult but not actually impossible to install them the wrong way up; if you bashed them into place with a hammer, buckling the mounting plate as you did so, you could do it. And, indeed, they did.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 6:31 AM
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2

I thought this was going to be about the pee tape


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 6:40 AM
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3

Just write "* -1" on the sensor and call it done.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 6:41 AM
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4

1 is impressive.

My car has an eco-meter which lights up the word "ECO" when it detects that you're being fuel-efficient. I call it the uphill/downhill-detector.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 6:43 AM
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5

Try reading "The Name of the Rose" while driving and see if it lights up.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 6:45 AM
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6

1: I think that even beats the classic "Oops, we forgot to convert from English to metric" screwup that crashed one of the Mars probes way back around 2000.


Posted by: AcademicLurker | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:23 AM
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7

re: 6

It still absolutely stuns me that there are/were engineers anywhere in the world not using SI units. I was genuinely shocked at the time. I assumed that even if ordinary Americans used Imperial measurements for stuff like measuring flour or buying beer, that engineers would use SI units.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:27 AM
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8

6: IIRC that same contractor (Lockheed?) also installed some components backwards in another probe, which also crashed.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:29 AM
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9

I once had a new guy who, without asking or anything, just changed all the data to regular measurements instead of metric. He switched back when I said he had to, but it didn't occur to him before I asked.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:30 AM
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10

Genesis.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:32 AM
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11

Agree with 7. The idea of actual professional engineers in the 21st century solemnly sitting down and measuring things in thousandths of an inch or fractions of a pound... well, now I know how foreigners feel when they find out our judges still wear wigs.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:37 AM
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12

That's vastly worse than wigs.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:41 AM
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13

Those were wigs?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:43 AM
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14

I have a (very smart) cousin who moved to Colorado and became an oil geologist. Last I talked to him he was all sixteenths-of-an-inch and charter schools.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:54 AM
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15

I had a great uncle who did the same. Beautiful cabin beside the mountain. This was before charter schools.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:55 AM
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16

Damn. I was looking forward to Space Noir.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 8:12 AM
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17

5 is really terrible. I laughed.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 8:26 AM
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18

Got to say I wonder how many other times Energiya has made a cockup like this and got away with it.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 9:00 AM
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19

Sometimes Russian hacks aren't successful.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 9:00 AM
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20

WITHOUT THE CHECKS AND DISCIPLINE OF A FREE MARKET MEDIOCRITY IS INEVITABLE.


Posted by: OPINIONATED LOCKHEED MARTIN | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 9:02 AM
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21

The hole was immediately sealed over with a special type of tape

Reports indicate that rocket scientists and others refer to this as "duct tape."


Posted by: bill | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 10:02 AM
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22

Which was designed to prevent air leaks, so why not? Unless space is different from my basement.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 10:06 AM
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23

22: No difference! If the Energia worker had only thought to use duct tape no one would ever have found out.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 10:36 AM
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24

I was just at a DIY store earlier today to get a sink drain and the diameters were all listed in inches. I had a moment of panic b/c it hadn't even occurred to me to measure my drain except in mm, until I remembered that I had this wonderful device in my pocket that would do the conversion for me.

My impression up till now was that Brits may drink in imperial pints and gain wieght by the stone, that where measurements really count they stick to SI, but maybe I've been fooled by hanging around with other scientists too much. It must be a real pain for all the Poles who actually do the building around here.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 10:53 AM
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25

"that where" s/b "but where"


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 10:55 AM
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26

Sink drains, and most household fixtures, have to be backward compatible with things installed decades ago. The regular measures are going to be the easiest way to do that.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 10:57 AM
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27

Yes, of course that makes sense.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 11:47 AM
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28

OK, so they used Kapton tape, which at least is higher tech than the Ace hardware duck tape I have. And epoxy, probably because they were out of Bondo fender putty.


Posted by: bill | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 12:04 PM
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29

|| NMM to Burt Reynolds |>


Posted by: J, Robot | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 12:39 PM
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30

Barry says we have a grace period.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 12:40 PM
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31

Stop the planet of the apes, I want to get off!


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 09- 6-18 7:25 PM
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32

A friend described some work she once did on a piece of metal that it turned out was going to be in an Ariane. Not only was everyone involved super careful, they had brought five examples when they only needed one of them to work.

Same friend has also lived in a lot of former Soviet places and says that anyone who's worked in those societies can totally believe someone let the drill slip, kludged the fix, and hoped nobody would notice.


Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 12:45 AM
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33

It's the real-life version of that enduring (and largely erroneous) myth about how Soviet technology is so robust and simple that you can fix it by just banging on it with a hammer.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 1:41 AM
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34

33 Fake news, comrade. Sometimes Ivan fix with screwdriver.


Posted by: Opinionated Ivan | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 2:36 AM
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35

My impression up till now was that Brits may drink in imperial pints and gain wieght by the stone, that where measurements really count they stick to SI, but maybe I've been fooled by hanging around with other scientists too much. It must be a real pain for all the Poles who actually do the building around here.
Other than pints for beer, pints and gallons for milk, most liquids come in litres/millilitres. Petrol comes in both litres and gallons, oddly enough. Length/distance is kind of in a middle ground, though probably mostly still imperial. People (my age at least) generally measure height in feet and inches, but probably use metric when measuring things (and certainly generic dimensions are almost always given in metric at retail). And obviously road signs are all miles, but people are pretty comfortable with kilometres. I suspect the pipes thing is a question of ease of interoperability with pre-metric plumbing.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 2:56 AM
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36

24.last is true. I did engineering science* in high school, and then various science-y things at university (adjacent to the philosophy thing), and the idea that you'd use anything other than SI would be ... odd.


* Scottish high school engineering sample paper here:

https://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/HigherSQPEngineeringScience.pdf


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 2:57 AM
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37

35 is right per informal usage. But anyone doing science or engineering is going to fully metric.

I can now think of weight and height (of people) in metric, which is partly because of being married to a non-Brit.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 2:58 AM
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38

I can now think of weight and height (of people) in metric, which is partly because of being married to a non-Brit.

The NHS seems to be fully metric now. At my last checkup everything was recorded metric; height, weight, blood pressure, the lot.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:05 AM
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39

Canadians use a hybrid system that I was told can be problematic. Tim had a friend in grad school who is a mining engineer and who emigrated from Egypt and is now a Canadian citizen living in Colorado.

Most stuff there is in metric, I.e. temperature is in Celsius, but a lot of stuff is still measured in inches and feet - even though the road distances and speed limits are all in kilometers. So, if you go to Home Depot, they sell you a 2x4 just like in the US.

I think I would be sad if we converted to Celsius. At least when it comes to the weather outside, I like that 0 to 100 covers all of the temperatures I'm going to experience most of the time.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:23 AM
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40

That was me.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:24 AM
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41

38: what are the non-metric units of blood pressure? Ours are mmHg or millimeters of Mercury. Is that not metric? It's been that way for ages.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:28 AM
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42

PSI?


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:57 AM
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43

Same friend has also lived in a lot of former Soviet places and says that anyone who's worked in those societies can totally believe someone let the drill slip, kludged the fix, and hoped nobody would notice.

The Royal Navy recently discovered that parts of a new ship were not actually bolted to the deck, because the guy who installed them ham-fistedly wrenched the heads off the bolts and then glued the heads back on to cover up the screwup. And that was the great and storied Clydeside shipbuilding industry.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 4:01 AM
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44

Hundredths of an inch of quicksilver.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 4:02 AM
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45

The Royal Navy could lose its +1 movement bonus if it isn't careful.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 4:35 AM
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46

41. Never heard of anyone measuring BP in anything but mmHg, and all other test results (cholesterol, A1C, etc.) are in mg/dL or mmol/L and so on. All metric units. Height and weight are always in English units.

Barometric pressure is still mostly reported (on TV, in newspapers, etc.) in inches of mercury, though. The National Weather Service reports have the English system stuff first, then the metric in parens: "30.21 in (1024.1 mb)". On their site you can switch to Spanish from a prominent button in the headline area, but switching to metric is hidden near the bottom of the page.


Posted by: DaveLMA | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 5:14 AM
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47

The National Weather Service reports have the English system stuff first,

Pretty sure in England we do millibars (or, technically, looking at the Met Office website, hectopascals) .


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 5:23 AM
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47: we do - hence the comforting litany of the coastal stations "Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, one thousand and three, rising more slowly, rain, three miles, good".


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 5:34 AM
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43: two new ships, actually.http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/16222184.Second_clyde-built_Navy_vessel_found_with__glued_bolts__as_repairs_continue_on_HMS_Forth/


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 5:36 AM
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38. On my last encounter with an NHS hospital, the nurse who weighed me gave me the result in Kg. and then asked, "Would you like me to convert that?"


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 6:53 AM
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51

Sick burn.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 7:04 AM
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52

I love my car's metric converter button, because I can cruise the interstate doing 100 and feel like a real man.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 9:38 AM
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53

IMX in the US we very consistently avoid the actual units of measure for blood pressure (we say "120 over 80", or if you're feeling fancy, "120 systolic over 80 diastolic"), such that I was not aware the unit was millimeters until right this second.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 10:42 AM
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54

120 over 80 would be nice. People actually have that?


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 2:22 PM
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55

Seems a waste of characters to not just say 3/2.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 2:41 PM
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56

Shit. Mac Miller died.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:27 PM
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57

36, 37: In college, everything was metric and so much easier. But in the construction industry, it's all pounds, kips (thousands of pounds), feet and inches, psf (for soil pressures), and ksi (kips per square inch) for steel strengths, etc.

The rough part was the first year, where I had to develop a casual sense for "sounds right" or "hmm... let me check my math", since I'd done most of my work in metric. Now, of course, I'd be in trouble for soils capacities in pascal.


Posted by: Mooseking | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 3:55 PM
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52- But at that speed can you still get 40 rods to the hogshead?
I've always been confused by the metric ton. If it's just 1000 kg why not go for the cooler sounding megagram?


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 6:13 PM
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59

Because people in shipping don't want to sound like drug lords.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 6:37 PM
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52 You can pretend it's Montana in the 90s.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 7:30 PM
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61

Billings has some talent.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 09- 7-18 9:53 PM
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62

46:Some things- though still metric - are measured differently in different places. Not sure why. In the US vitamin D levels are measured in ng/ml. Elsewhere it's nmol/ml. Not sure why it's different.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 5:34 AM
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54: 111/72 was my last BP. 115 systolic is good. New guidelines say that over 120/80 is elevated. 130/80 is hypertension that should be addressed w/ diet and exercise. 140/90 was the old cut off and is when you need meds. Under the new guidelines the percentage of Americans considered hypertensive has gone from around 32% to 46%.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 5:46 AM
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64

Are you sure that isn't just from Trump?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 6:17 AM
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65

Everyone post your blood pressures and SAT scores.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 8:48 AM
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66

If we end up having a Space Force, some way must be found to give Bill Daily posthumous command of it.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 11:32 AM
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67

Doctors were able to diagnose me as hypertensive just from my SAT score.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 11:48 AM
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68

Realistically, the right way to go on this is to pay the President for naming rights. Maybe I should set up a Gofundme for the Roger Healey Space Force Command Center.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 11:56 AM
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69

I'm usually around 140/100. I've brought it down a bit by fostering a low stress lifestyle and cutting down on salt and pickles and olives and processed meats and all those wonderful things. I've been on meds on and off, but mostly off because there are no over-the-counter blood pressure meds and going to a doctor is such a goddamn hassle.

Seriously, how hard would it be to make diuretics available OTC? Are they afraid I will abuse them and make my self pee too much?


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 12:32 PM
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70

We don't want the competition.


Posted by: Opinionated Russian | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 3:08 PM
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69. Yes. Diuretics are bad for keeping your potassium levels in the proper range, even at the normal dosage. (Low potassium can cause muscle cramps or heart spasms. Not good.)


Posted by: DaveLMA | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 3:08 PM
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72

L. Ron Hubbard skipped that part.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 3:33 PM
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73

Anyway, one time I was hiking in moderately hot weather and had to stop because of what I thought was heat exhaustion. More experienced hikers that I asked later said it might have been low potassium and suggested I carry something with electrolytes to dump in my water or a banana.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 4:07 PM
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69: Uh, Spike. the 100 diastolic is bad. Over 105 and they send you to the ER. Part of my job is making sure that we keep our population of hypertensives under control, so this just makes me nervous.

I believe that diuretics require annual labs to be prescribed safely.

Spike, you could try something like acupuncture which is available OTC. But, honestly, you should get yourself to a doctor.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 4:56 PM
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75

Speaking of high blood pressure, WTF was up with the Serena match? I have never seen a game penalty awarded in professional tennnis, much less a grand slam final.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 5:01 PM
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76

How do you dump electrolytes in a banana?


Posted by: Unimaginative | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 5:45 PM
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77

Needle.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 5:50 PM
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78

I was going to use the same one I use to put vodka in the oranges I bring to the office.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 5:51 PM
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79

It's from Barefoot Contessa.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 6:01 PM
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80

Pitt is having special teams problems.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09- 8-18 6:31 PM
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