Scott Talk

Pestering Attorney

2012-02-24T20:52:00.000-08:00

I can't tell if I think having an attorney with this name is a good thing or a bad thing:

I suppose it's a toss up. Either your attorney will annoy the other parties into a settlement or piss off a jury... The advertising pretty much writes itself though. Ben H. Pester, attorney-at-law, willing to annoy the crap out of everyone until you win your case.

Dealers.

2012-02-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a nice vacation. Took a cruise on Norwegian. It had its ups and downs, but mostly, it was a good time.

Anyway, getting back to work next week. I was looking through one of the old city directories at the college when I came across this:

Haha, this meant something very different back then. I think this was from a 1925 directory.

What in the...

2012-02-01T20:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, I really have no idea what is going on here. I was looking through pictures of the college I work at in the 60s and 70s and this came up:

Near as I can tell, this is some sort of ridiculous competition. I really hope this guy won. College parties create some weird pictures, even 50 years ago.

Anyway, hope this haunts your dreams!

Asbestos Springs

2012-01-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of the Asbestos Springs sign a while after it closed for business:

No idea on the dates, but it looks pretty old. When the roads clear up, I'm going to try and head up the mountain to see if the asbestos mill is still around or maybe take a recent picture of the sign.

Worlds Most Romantic... crop?

2012-01-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

Came across a book I might just have to read someday:

How would you like to be with that guy? He writes a book about hay...

Anyway, students came back this week to the college. Already have a problem with vandalism, but what are you gonna do?

Silly College

2012-01-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

Well, it is the last few days before the students come back to college. Naturally, administration has decided it is the perfect time to do some demolition! The offshoot of this is that the construction crew had to shut off the gas to my building for the day. This afternoon, I looked at the temps outside.

20 degrees with a windchill of 0.

Because I work in an archive, we take note of temperatures and humitidy to protect our records. At 4 this afternoon, my office was 55 degrees and still dropping.

Hopefully they fix it for tomorrow. Or maybe we can hope for a power outage. Might get to go home!

Asbestos Mill

2012-01-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

I came across a picture of the old asbestos mill while I was at work today. They used to mine the stuff and send it through there. Seems pretty non-descript for how dangerous it is.

Yes, people, that is where they produced the stuff that causes all that great cancer. Why did I come across this? I had a research request concerning one of the high schools around here. In 1990, two of them had to combine because one shut down for the year for asbestos abatement. A whole year!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to everyone! Woke up to snow:

I'm going to be cliche and and say that my resolution is to work out more. Maybe go back to school. Maybe law school. Maybe win the lottery. Maybe slip and fall and sue. Same thing right?

Any good resolutions out there?

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-26T11:14:00.001-08:00

Merry belated Christmas to everyone! Hope you had a good one!

Asbestos Companies

2011-12-15T05:58:00.000-08:00

So I was going through pictures at the archives today and I came across some interesting ones.

These are from the town I live in. You hear a lot on the news about asbestos related illnesses (and in fact, two of my grandparents died of those, asbestosis I think) and about how you should call an attorney to get some money out of it.

Have you ever seen someone do an asbestos abatement? We had some tiles at a school of mine that turned out to have some asbestos in them. They take it seriously, it is like a chemical weapon spill. For a tile. It is hard to imagine that people actually used to just work with the stuff. Those guys working on the asbestos chimneys probably didn't wear any form of protection against the stuff.

Of course, it is only now that we know about the various mix of cancers (mesothelioma being the one you hear about most) and other illnesses (pleural plaques and effusion, along with asbestosis) that asbestos causes.

There was an asbestos mine up on the mountain that I have some pictures of. I'll probably post those sometime. These guys are mining without any forms of breathing protection, but of course, none really existed or was thought necessary. My how times have changed.

The stare down...

2011-12-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

I was walking back from human resources after turning in time cards the other day (which apparently falls under "any and all additional duties as needed") and I came face to face with a vicious looking animal!

He saw me...

Then walked away. Oh well, maybe not so vicious after all.

This is an emergency...?

2011-12-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

I'm not really sure in what situation lack of paper constitutes an emergency... but... to each his own.

Yes! Call law enforcement! Your lawyer!

College Life

2011-12-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

Working at a college tends to create some weird situations. We had a person in my department unexpectedly die last week. It was odd, it leveled her so quickly. A few weeks ago, her vocal chords became paralyzed. She died of parathyroid cancer not long afterward. I didn't know her very well, but they closed my department and a lot of us went to her funeral on Thursday.

On Friday, we immediately turned around and had a surprise birthday party for our Dean.

Anyway, not much else to say, so here's a picture:

Back to work woes...

2011-11-28T17:29:00.000-08:00

Well back to work today after a long weekend. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! Feel free to share about any family brawls. The closest we got was when two sides of a very religious relatives got in a heated discussion about whether or not drinking was ok. Whoo.

Luckily, when I got back to work, the networks at the college (or at least our connections) were broken. Somehow they were set to read-only so no one could create or modify their files. This is a pretty big problem. We have a good IT department here, so they sent someone down. He attempted to fix it, but mostly just screwed it up so that our connections were broken and we could not even open them.

Long story short, I went to work today, did very little actual work, apologized to researchers and volunteers, and then went home.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T16:01:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everyeone! Heading out of town for a few days. Doing anything fun?

80's Hair, Part 2

2011-11-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hey, I just thought that maybe I should post some more of these:

Again, I move that the bigger hair, the better. These are from a college people! A college!

Big Hair!

2011-11-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

I was going through some pictures at work and came across some pretty awesome examples of 80's hair:

I think those hair styles should make a come back. Who's with me?

November 16 - Minor Work Annoyances

2011-11-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

And here we are again, I think I'm going to talk about some of my latest work annoyances.

I work at a college and we, like every other college and university, have a public relations department. These are the people that issue press releases, put together the pamphlets and brochures and whatever ever else that gets released to the public. Unfortunately, my department holds most of the photographs older than the last couple of years. When public relations needs to issue a new... say... basketball brochure, they come to us to find older pictures of record holders and such.

Unfortunately for them, we have folder after folder labeled, "Basketball" with no dates and no identifications on any of the actual photographs. Thus, when PR decides they need, NEED, a picture of Joe so and so, I get to spend the day looking through all of these folders, hoping to run across the right guy. No idea what he looks like, no idea what his number is, but they expect results. The next day. For the list of seven basketball players from the late 80's and 90's.

Ah well, I just finished one of those. They told us about the request late Friday last week, a sent a "how's this coming along" email on Monday and every day after. Thanks, answering your stupid emails really is going to get this done quicker.

Anyway, feel free to share your work annoyances. Doesn't matter if it's a big deal, I know mine isn't!

November 10 - Wow.

2011-11-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

So those of you who have been following my blog know that I work in a college and I tend to do a lot of research. Every once in a while, I run across something that makes me go WHY!?

Ahem. Anyway, I thought I'd share this with you:

There you go. Apparently, this woman who will haunt my dreams is some semi-famous person from about here's mother. Also, AHH!

November 6 - Still no snow.

2011-11-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

Another potential snow storm passed us up. I really like taking pictures of those, but nature isn't cooperating. Here is one from the last storm:

I liked this one because it kind of looks like a paiting. Yes, it is through a window. It was too cold outside, what do you want from me!?

November 2 - No snow?

2011-11-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe a little. That snowstorm turned out to be a lot less impressive than I was led to believe. During the day yesterday, the weather channel reevaluated the situation and revised the 8-10 inches of accumulation to 1-3 inches. Which also leaned more toward the 1 than the 3. In any event, I was able to take some pictures of the snow last night, so here you go!

Hope you enjoy them. Maybe I'll get another snowstorm here soon.

October 31 - Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

Happy halloween to everyone! Hope it's a good one.

In other news, a big snowstorm is supposed to come through here tomorrow, so I should have some interesting pictures to post. Tune in then!

October 27 - The Volunteers

2011-10-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned at some point that I work in basically a museum. We try to make as much of our collection searchable as possible. Unfortunately, our pool of labor is pretty limited. There is a group of 80 year old volunteers that come in and attempt to help out, but they usually end up giving us more work in the end. Here:

Ok. 5 unkown caddy strippers. Seriously this went into one of the volunteer's databases. Luckily we don't give them access to the real ones. For the curious, they are supposed to be Candy Stripers which are old timey hospital volunteers. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure who came up with the idea that these people should have access to a computer, but I'm thankful for the new business model for golf.

October 23, 2011 - Some Pictures!

2011-10-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

Time for some new pictures!

Snow! Good thing it's only on the mountain... not a huge fan. Hopefully it waits a while before the real snow begins.

Also, what the heck is this? I couldn't get close enough for a better picture, but this spider was silver. Ok fine, I refused to get closer. It looked singularly evil.

The Law of Water Part 2

2011-10-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

When we last met, we had barely scratched the surface of the study of water law. The first method of water allocation that we will discuss is called Riparian rights. Landowners bordering a waterway are considered riparians. It is by virtue of having land abutting water that gives them certain rights under the laws of most states in the United States. Historically, landowners next to water had great advantages over those landowners who had no ready access to water. It is easy to see why, aside from providing basic necessities such as food and water, access to the water allowed mills, later industrial uses and recreation.

Historically, American jurisdictions subscribed to a "natural flow" rule that gave every riparian owner to have the water in such a state that other users would not diminish the quality or quantity of the flow. Such theories proved to be impractical however, because any use would diminish the water in some perceptible way.

These days, most jurisdictions espouse a "reasonable use" principle. This does not mean that the use itself must be reasonable, but the use must be reason in relation to all other uses. The result of which is a confusing tangle of rights based on land ownership, land size, and proportions.

None the less, riparian rules apply in 29 states and are therefore important. These states however are generally ones where water is plentiful. Our next segment will examine prior appropriation, a method used when water is scarce.