Farked
 

I think you were farked http://www.fark.com Their public archive doesn't go back far enough or they removed the link because it stopped functioning; however, I think I remember seeing there. Anyone with TotalFark confirm?

Which is in turn evidence of the myth of broadband, if a bunch of people interested in a few pictures of a boat incident can crush an ISP. But it's certainly true; some back of the envelope calculations say that it certainly could result in that sort of network requirement.

What really SHOULD happen in cases like these: the whole shootin' match should go on Morpheus or some other P2P arrangement. Then it doesn't matter how much bandwidth is needed; people will naturally share.

Now imagine if peer-to-peer sharing of this sort were included in the browser, so that a request could be managed through the browser interface AND such requests could be linked into web sites.

You hear me knockin'?

Good idea. Thanks.

--Bill G.

willy@microsoft.com

Meanwhile, if you send the images to me, I'll put them into a nice one-image-per-page format with a frame and a Cellar banner of some sort, and then we can point people to that version, and if it maxes out my T1 I'll just put up a message for people to try again later. Just an idea...

I'll email you the URL on the site to get 'em. You can do whatever you want with them.

the story
 

a few friends of mine are on a boat list, and this is the story that was posted - take it as it were

>There are some things about me that you are just unaware of, and this
>instance is a fitting example. Please send this to all, my explanation.
>And as Paul Harvey used to say..." that's the rest of the story..."
>
>It was either late 1978 or early 1979, I have forgotten exactly, but
anyway,
>I am close on either... The river is the Tombigbee River and this happened
>to be the record high water ever for that area. The towboat you see coming
>down on the bridge is the Motor Vessel Cahaba owned by Warrior Gulf
>Navigation out of Mobile, Alabama. Warrior Gulf is a subsidiary of
>Pittsburg Steel. I know you are familiar with Birmingham's coal mines and
>steel mills, and this company would haul iron pellets up to Birmingport and
>off-load to make steel plate. On the return the barges were filled with
>coal for export at the McDuffie Coal Terminal at the mouth of the Mobile
>River and at the head of Mobile Bay.
>The Bridge was the Old Rooster Bridge (since demolished and removed - I saw
>the explosion to tear it down also) located below Demopolis, Alabama. The
>land-side highway dead ends at the bluff, and you can still drive to this
>site and imagine how high the river had to be to get to the bottom of the
>bridge...
>The pass or Channel Span of the bridge was located on the far West side of
>the river, or on the opposite bank from the photographer's standpoint. In
>normal river flow, we would drop down near the rock bluff and steer through
>the opening to pass southward with our tows of coal barges. Normal loads
>were six barges, each measuring 195' X 35' and loaded to a 10' draft. This
>allowed each barge to carry approximately 2,000 tons of coal (times six =
>12,000 tons X 2000 pounds = 24 Million pounds of cargo.) The boat is 1800
>Horsepower twin engine diesel built in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It is named
>after one of the eight "friendly" Indian tribes. It is the Motor Vessel
>Cahaba. At the "sticks" or helm is Captain Jimmie Wilkerson, a long time
>river pilot and was my personal friend - since deceased.
>The river current was so very treacherous that we were forced to drop down
>to the bridge in the slack(er) water on the left descending bank and when
we
>got down to the bridge, we uncoupled the boat from the barges and let the
>barges drift down under the bridge. The bottom of the bridge would "shave"
>the coal stacked in the barges off to a level surface. The next step was
>to back the vessel upriver and then go over to the far West side and
>traverse the bridge's channel span with the boat, and run down and catch
the
>barges. It was just too dangerous to try to bring the barges through the
>bridge span in the current.
>Anyway, Jimmie dropped down properly and with the entire rest of the crew
>standing on the barges for safety, he began to reverse his engines to back
>away. His stern would have to be kept directly pointed into the current or
>the boat would travel sideways like a kite without it's tail. Captain Jim
>was a fine pilot, but he made a small mistake and his stern was caught in
>the current, twisted sideways and the river smashed him into the bridge
>sideways. Notice that the boat re-surfaced right side up on the down
stream
>side. What luck you say? Nope, WGN ballasted all their vessels with
three
>to four feet of cement in the bottom. The boat was like a little yellow
>rubber duckie, and came back up like a duckie oughta do. The boat
>suffered major cosmetic damages, but little flooding because of water tight
>doors, except in the pilothouse. Notice the picture where the boat is not
>quite righted and you can see water pouring out of the wheelhouse door.
The
>chair washes out, and Jimmie told me he was holding on to the controls with
>all his might to keep from going out the drain and into the river.
>He was very shook up and you can see him approach the tow of barges
>downriver. Well he didn't get it together quite soon enough and he smashed
>into the barges, causing further damage.
>I next saw Jimmie about a month after this and we had a cup of coffee
>together and talked about the incident. He was smoking a Camel Non-filter
>but didn't even need an ashtray beacuse his hands were still shaking too
>much for the ash to build up to any degree.
>How do I know all this? I was on the boat that went through the bridge
>immediately before the Cahaba. The Motor Vessel James E. Philpott made the
>bridge and was headed south at close to 15 MPH. For all you who don't
>understand, that is very fast on a commercial towboat with that much
>tonnage.
>Glad to pass this on to everybody...
>Captain Michael L. Smith

Even more info
 

I found a web site that discusses EXACTLY what happened that day

http://www.riverchat.com/cgi-bin/Ult...Page=0&Session

Take a look - very interesting what was going on

Totally off-subject, but your posting that "riverchat" website (River and river-industry related subjects) reminded me of one of my favorite things about the web: there's a place for everyone. And not just the niche sexual fetishists, which seems to be all people think about when they think about message boards and chat rooms on the net. Hooray, Internet!

... and thanks for all the more info about this fascinating event, Charlie.

sapienza

It is the best part of the net! I found out about this because I have a few friends (met via the web) who are into steam launches (Think African Queen). They build and run them. I build and run steam train models (Live Steam)

Charlie

The net really does rock. I sent Charlies link to a buddy who used to Captain a lobster boat since he was so pumped when he saw the original photos, very cool.

Charlie, do you do your own machining or can you or do you buy steam kits?

[Mostly, I do my own machining - I've got a 12"x36' lathe and a Burke Millrite (MVN) down the basement, along with a little Sherline mill (It was my first mill), that I'm setting up with CNC. It doesn't matter that the Sherline fits on the table of the Millrite

For those of you who wonder what a Millrite is - You may have seen a Bridgeport Vertical Mill - Bridgeports came in 3 basic sizes - the old M Head, the J head, and the Series II (In size order). The Millrite is somewhere between the M head and the J head in size (Closer to the M Head), but takes R-8 tooling like the J Head (In fact, the HEAD of the J-head will fit on the ram of the Millrite)

I guess you could say I'm a multidisciplinary Geek :p - I can do "Steel Age" stuff - weld, steel fabrication, machine shop work (what I did for $$$ during college), I can do electronics tech work (right after college), and now I program for a living

A true Renaissance geek!

sapienza

I hear you
 

I used to program and run a Fadal CNC (machining refractory ceramics of all things, I felt sorry for that machine), and can also weld using wire feed, stick, TIG and gas torch. Been a crane operator, forklift driver etc. Spent many a long shift hand-cranking a Bridgeport mill and Hardinge lathe, and basically doing all those shop tasks that it seems every American guy does in his early years.

Then I got out of school with a CS degree and now program for a living in C, C++, Java and a little HTML. I never really looked back, though I did buy a house with 3-phase in the garage, and I have a few tools out there still.

I think shop skills and computer skills are closely related, if you can do one you can probably handle the other.

Re: I hear you
 

OUCH - that's about the worst!

(Big snip here)


I've said this more than once - the thought process needed to machine parts (and I'm not talking a machine operator here - you ran a BP - you know what I mean) is very similar to what a programmer does.

(BTW My lathe is a little Atlas - I almost brought home a Hardinge DV59 the other week, but... One day, I'll have either a HLVH or a Monarch 10ee)

So, I'm currently a programmer and interested in perhaps doing some machining, maybe even as a career... How would I get into it?