Concerning Steam, Wood Chips and Waves.

I work at a steam power plant.  Every single day I come to work, it amazes me how all these parts come together to generate power.  

Of course, a lot of things go wrong.  Constantly there's things going wrong.  We're chronically shorthanded and underfunded.  The owners can't pay their bills, so spare parts and tools are next to impossible to obtain.

But still, we make 127,000 pounds of steam per hour at 655 PSIG, and make a turbine spin, and we make 12.5 gross megawatts of power.  Not that much, not really.  It's not even 17,000 horsepower, in the end.

Things break a lot.  We burn wood, not coal or oil, so it's harder to start fires ... but they happen.

And every day I come to work, I have a little bit more respect for the men who sailed to war in steam-powered ships.

It's next to impossible to keep this plant running well, when it doesn't rock back and forth.  There's nobody shooting at us.  We're not dependent on the amount of steam we can make at any given time to save our very lives.  

The amount of power we can make doesn't enable us to aim the guns to return fire at an enemy we can't even see down in the fire room.

We don't have emergencies where our ability to stay online is what keeps our bilge pumps running, what keeps us from flooding, and drowning.

We don't have black oil spraying from any fuel lines, threatening to burn the engineering spaces down around us.

At the end of the day, I get to go home.  Decompress.  Have a glass of scotch.  I don't have to keep power going during a typhoon, when my 2,500-ton Fletcher-class destroyer is pitching horribly.

God, I don't even really know how to put it.  What to say.  Those men, those engineers, were absolute giants.

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Quick Update!

I'm at work right now. The police just stopped by to do a photo lineup with me. I picked someone out. I'd give it 90% confidence. They're going to show the picture to the sweet little old lady mentioned earlier - she got a better look at him than I did.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a suspect.

Burglars are stupid.

UPDATE: See today's post!

They tried for the hat trick yesterday. Third time in three weeks, second time this week.

Please note that I said tried.

The guy walked up the alley, checked out the houses. That's what my back neighbor said - she saw him. (Sweet little old lady, love her to death.)

He walked up, saw the window was open.

Walked around the front of my house, saw there was no car there.

Walked around the side of the house, hopped in through the (conveniently) open back bedroom window.

Opened up the bedroom door, took a couple steps into the hallway.

And then he shit himself, because I was home. I'd parked my car in that sweet little old lady's driveway.

And I was armed.

And I kicked open the door to the second bedroom, and pulled a Mosin-Nagant M44, with bayonet fixed, to my shoulder, yelling 'FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKER!'

Unfortunately, his reactions were quicker than I had expected, given the circumstances. Before I could get the rifle up, he had turned around and was in the bedroom again, making a dive for the window. I had the shot on his back, but I couldn't take it, not in California. I'd have been looking at murder one.

God DAMNIT I hate California.

If I'd waited another 15 seconds before jumping him, he'd have been in the living room, with no way out except through my bayonet or by messing with deadbolts, and I'd have been on him then. Surrender or die, then. If he went for the door, I'd have had time for a buttstroke to the head, or a bayonet in the kidneys.

As it was, he made it out of the house, and last I saw he was running down the alley. Goddamn, I've never seen a fatboy run and jump like that. He could have made the Olympic team!

Cops looked, but didn't find him. There's only two officers on shift at any given time.

UPDATE: The description (shortish, fattish, Mexican, no facial hair or visible tattoos) got passed around to the neighbors. One of them reported him scoping out houses in the alley behind her house this morning. Cops were scrambled, but didn't find him. Odd how that description blends in pretty well to the background in California.

UPDATE II: The landlord is pretty definitively clear on this one. It turns out there's been a chain of burglaries happening all over this part of town. There's been 5 or 6 in the past couple weeks, all within 2 - 3 blocks of where I live.