It Wasn't Sammy Twelge Who Ate Those Fish
8/27/1

I always say that I don�t write about work, but I�m going to write about work.

A few weeks ago, TC came to me needing some calculation done. We were going to send in a bogus sewer credit request to Ace. In some odd twist of fate, Ace, an environmental inspector, is in charge of giving people money back for filling their pools [since the water doesn�t go back to the sewer and the utility company bills on consumption].

According to the letter, Sammy Twelge had been filling his six-acre lake with city water since February 1998. The total was around 20 million gallons, if memory serves me. We calculated a ten-foot deep lake that was six acres in area. Since a credit cannot go back more than three year, via some unwritten rule, we had to find out if you could fill this amount with a normal garden hose. Nope, it would take 7.5 years with a normal garden hose [actually longer due to evaporation]. However, with three it could be possible, so we just assumed that the fictitious Mr. Twelge would be using something like a fire hose.

Labman�s home number was used, a manager in our office�s pager was used as the pager number, and I found a piece of land inside Huntsville that had a lake near it, then added 1000 to the address so it wouldn�t come up in the database.

Only today did we let him know. He suspected it was fake all along.

In the aquarium in the lab, we now only have seven tuffy fish. The tin foil barb that Cartoon Woman brought ate three of them over the weekend. She had asked about a week and a half ago if she could bring her mean fish to our tank. We said no, since the huge plecostamus would get munched.

Heck, that�s why we got feeder fish, because we know they won�t mess with him. Oh, and they are really cheap too.

So, over the weekend a week ago, she brought in a tin foil barb [which will eventually get to 13 inches long], two alleged silver dollar fish, and a mean little cichlid. I commented that the cichlid might turn aggressive but Cartoon Woman said that this was the nice one, and that the other fish that is so mean at her house is one just like it but bigger.

So, I guess all my beautiful little tuffy will be eaten. We suppose it is the tinfoil barb, since he is the largest. They were quite hungry this morning and ate all the food in the first 5 minutes. I�ll feed them more this afternoon.

When I showed TC my new shoes in the lab, I said they were bowling shoes from the future. TC looked at them and said, �What are they?� I guess they are sufficiently bizarro.

And speaking of freakish, TC showed up in a cheap plastic Viking helmet today. I don�t mean a football helmet. I mean with horns off the sides.