Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Major Event Coming Forth

So, from the title, you may think that this is some major event of epic proportions. Well, you thought right.

I drive a 1999 Toyota Corolla. She's a trooper. In fact, she's about to pass a huge milestone.
200,000 miles!

At this moment, I'm about 150 miles short of that. I'm pretty sure this is my last tank of gas before she roles over. Just to get an idea of how far 200,000 miles is, I've put this together for you.

Distance from my house to my Grandparents (in Utah) :: 1 mile
I've traveled to my grandparents house and back home 100,000 times!

Distance from my house to my other Grandparents (in Colorado) :: 500 miles
I've been to my Grandparents house and back 200 times.

Distance across the country (California to Maryland) :: about 3000 miles
My car has been across the country almost 67 times.

Diameter of the earth :: 7,926 miles
My car has traveled to the other side of the earth through its core 25 times (12.5 times there and back. I've still got a ways to go to get back home)

Circumference of the earth (around the equator) :: 24,901 miles
My car has traveled 8 times around the earth.

Distance from earth to moon (from core to core) :: 238, 875 miles
My next destination. Better pull out my set of moon tires. I'll finally get to use them! Good thing I brought my iPod, too.

Monday, March 15, 2010

New Olympic Event: Chair Stacking

I work a custodial job while going to school. Despite the common conception of custodial jobs, I actually love doing it. I don't love it because of the things that I have to do (such as clean up a backed up sewer mess. Eww!), but my supervisor and coworkers make my job interesting. The reason for writing this post comes from my experimentation to make carpet cleaning fun and interesting. I'm going to share with you a little on how to make something dull and boring a little more interesting and worthwhile.

Carpet cleaning by nature is nothing special and very monotonous. Basically, you move the furniture out of the way, vacuum, spray down the soap, then extract it. I have been experimenting with making the first step interesting: moving furniture.

Most of the carpet I clean is found in classrooms and there are a lot of desks to move. When I first started, I would just push the desks to one side. Then I experimented with stacking. The trick with this is to stack them so that they don't fall and severely injure the person in the morning that has to move all of them back. I also see it as a way to make the morning person's job interesting. It's like a puzzle that they have to take apart just right so that it doesn't come crashing down. For example, this is my latest stack.

This is by far my most complex stacking job to date. I'm always looking for ways to make the stacks higher and more complex. It keeps my brain working while doing mindless tasks.