h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I didn't break/run into/scrape/squish/poke a hole in/knock over anything with the forklift

But somebody sat on my reading glasses

I miss messing about on a forklift! It was great fun!

oo... I'd love to hav ea go driving one of those things - good days are easier to come by.... - you jst need to set realistic or lower goals...

I remember once, in the depths of winter, the parking lot was like an ice rink. One thing led to another and somehow we ended up pulling skids and hand-break turns across it in the forklift. All great fun, until we spotted the patrol car that had been sitting watching us for the past ten minutes.

I think that was the time they made us work Christmas Day, so we resolutely decided to do not one iota of work.

My goals are already so low, 2legs... no, let's not go there

Forklifts on ice But if it was Christmas Day, who's going to be around? I think the cops should have have given you the for an entertaining divertissement

Any road up... I'm one day without incident

I looked up while my dad was watching some "reality" show on one of the formerly respectable channels, maybe History or Discovery or A&E, and a guy in a fork lift stops a car thief by lifting the car up as the thief tries to drive off the lot.

Let's all work out the logistics necessary for that to happen.... ON CAMERA!





That said, driving a fork lift or a front loader / back hoe is something I feel is a skill I should learn before I die.

Oh!


I should mention that I've just "learned" one of the skills I thought I should learn before I die.




I can now pick *some* locks.



I am still a beginner, but I just feel proudly elated that I now know the basics of lockpicking.



I now want to watch episodes of _Magnum P.I._ to see if Tom Selleck was even close. (Specifically, I want to see if he was using a tension wrench.)

Gosho - does that mean you have had an incident every day you have used the fork lift up to now, or was today your first day weilding the thing?

BG - lockpicking is a great hobby here in Europe. The Dutch are experts at it. My sons exchanged lock-picking kits as Christmas presents last year, which they ordered from Holland. It seems to be all the rage. This year's Rubik's cube, so to speak.

PS - it's all above board, just like they get geeks to codebreak systems to find the weak points.

Isn't lock-picking one of the skills Richard Feinman taught himself? Or was that safe-cracking? I think it was safe-cracking.

TC, it was one day since I last damaged something with the forklift, which I've been using these past six months, but in the last couple of weeks I've gouged a hole in the wall (lifting down some barrels which were placed too close to it in the first place, and not by me), caught the top of the forklift in the string lights that hang over the main production area (which everyone agrees were a hazard anyway and it was only a matter of time, and I don't mean wussy little string lights like the ones you hang on the Christmas tree), and tried to put a pallet of cider onto the shelves in the cold store with the forks lifted too high, thus sliding half a dozen cases off the top layer and onto the floor My reason for that last one is that I was listening to the cricket on my earphones and was distracted, and also couldn't hear when the top of the pallet caught the bottom of the shelf above it so I didn't realise it was too high until it started raining cans .

Lesson learned.

Yep... safe cracking, although I suspect Fineman also could pick locks.

He famously opened the safe in Robert Oppenheimer's office, the one containing the Manhattan Project plans. How he did it was rather simple. For weeks he would chat with Oppie in his office. He would sit on the safe. Oppenheimer left the safe door open during work hours. With the door open, Fineman could see the tumbler positions. He would surreptitiously spin the dial and check the tumblers. Once he determined the combination he walked into Oppenheimer's office before he had opened the safe and boldly declared that the plans weren't secure and demonstrated how "quick and easy" he could open it.


Richard Fineman is my hero.