Today I Learned [v2]

Everybody has heard of the story of RMS Titanic and the disaster was one of my first major interests. I've spent a lot of time researching the disaster and have long known the disaster has several different angles all feeding into each other to result in the tragic loss of the ship.

I just watched another documentary of the disaster, this time on a unique subject. Titanic was on fire prior to the disaster, she had a coal bunker fire and historians and the inquiries into the sinking discounted the fire for the most part. Until new photographs emerged showing a large dark mark on Titanic's hull prior to her leaving the shipyard. This mark lines up perfectly with Coal Bunker #6, the bunker that was on fire.

Titanic's coal bunkers were massive, three stories tall and dozens of feet wide. In the days Titanic sailed the standard practice for coal bunker fires (which were not uncommon) was to wet the top of the bunker while shoveling the burning coal into the boilers. However with bunkers this huge, detecting a fire deep within the bunker can be difficult. Fighting it would be highly time consuming, in the order of a few days.

Titanic had been coaled three weeks before she set sail. Most history books say the fire started as Titanic left. The documentary uncovers evidence that the fire had been burning in the three story high coal bunker at least one week prior to the start of her maiden passenger voyage. This is highly supported by how nearly the entire crew that took the ship from the shipyard to Southampton jumped ship without saying anything.

This fire was put out prior to the collision with the iceberg, however the fire had been burning for 2 to 3 weeks. The steel bulkhead, one of the watertight bulkheads, forming the back of the bunker was found to be red hot and severely warped.  The damage was covered up and because the bulkhead was just behind the last of the iceberg damage, it failed as the ship flooded and hastened the ship's sinking.

When one examines the transcripts of the inquiries, it's quite obvious the fire was being covered up and information was being suppressed, especially in the British inquiry.

Just because the Detroit doesn't visibly smoke doesn't mean it's a good idea to stand by the tail pipe, particularly when cold. I held my hand in front of it for a few seconds checking to make sure all the cylinders were firing after a cold start. When I pulled my hand away, it was covered in soot.

I almost feel bad for the neighbor whose car is usually parked next to my preferred parking spot. He drives, well owns, a white Lincoln sedan. The car very rarely moves. Oh well!

/imitating Evie

There be a TWEWY Manga

iPod Shuffles are darn near indestructable. Ran mine through the wash again, with my work clothing. Set to Heavy and Hot/Cold. Put into the drier and ran it. And the thing still works. Literally opened the door, saw it on the ledge, plugged in and played away.

Automotive chemicals like penetrating oil should not be used indoors because they give off way more odor than you think.

Etrian Odyssey II is the only game in the series where emphasis is placed on the attacker's stats, as opposed to the attacker's weapon.

The first game treated STR and weapon ATK as equal - one point of STR equaled one point of ATK, and vice versa. III and IV (and I think the Untolds and V? idk) put emphasis on the weapon, with STR being delegated to working as a multiplier for damage. Still important, but not as huge in the formula.

II, however, has weapon ATK cover 6 or 3 times less damage than STR does, depending on the instance in the formula.

There's a portal board game

http://www.updowndsm.com/
and I'm not 21 yet so I can't go there until 2018 november 4th

Fire department finally got their new tiller! This truck replaces a conventional ladder truck with what is somewhat best described as a ladder trailer pulled by a semi-tractor. It looks sexy. If I could find more press material online I'd absolutely post a picture of it.

It looks something like this, only black and yellow:

Known this for a bit now, but I saw it full force earlier...

I've finally gotten around to playing SMITE more with my IRL friends from work. Even been voice chatting with them through Discord. They're great at giving advice and tips, and it's helped me improve my game quite a bit. Just a ton of fun overall playing, chatting, and learning new stuff together (like a hilariously broken team combo we found out by accident the other night in a practice game).

Unfortunately, I learned that it's not just me that has to deal with idiots online. I mean, I've known this, but seeing it actually play out in front of you really hits it home that it's not just you that deals with bullshit online.

In an odd way, it feels kind of good knowing that, and knowing that everyone has rough days and good days. It also feels awful knowing my friends are having to put up with it...

The world does not want the GMC to run again... Between stuff falling on my knuckles and rain.

today I relearned that silver drops his trainer card in HGSS, as opposed to the infamous name dropping with question marks, and the trainer card is handed to the authorities to learn his name instead of you recalling his name.

He's still ??? in my headcannon.

The Chinese River Dolphin is the last known large, relatively speaking, species to have been driven to Extinction by humans since the 1950s. The Yangtze River was their only known habitat and were rapidly vanishing from the river in the 1980s. Conversation efforts were too little, too late and a five week survey of the Yangtze River in 2006 failed to turn up any dolphins.

If changing the battery on a Volkswagen GTI, and you drop the battery hold down somewhere down onto the transmission, then decide to try removing the battery tray to gain more room to search for missing hold down, do not attempt to remove the fuse box to gain more room to work by the singular screw in the middle.