Yet more keen links one might want to share

[xoxoxoBruce]

So your mommy and your teachers said you can be anything you want to be, to which you said, I want to be an astronaut. Well reality bites, the US space program devolves and dreams fade.
But buck up bubby, there's an alternative, you can be an aquanaut.
You can be a Saturation Diver.

The deeper you dive, the more you get paid. In his second or third year an apprentice may be promoted, or “broken out,” to a full-time diver. His salary will increase to between $60,000 and $75,000. He will start as an “air diver,” diving as deep as 120 feet while breathing regular air. Jobs at this depth might include retrieving tools from the worksite, or cutting and retrieving the polypropylene cord that runs between the surface vessel and the underwater worksite. Next the diver will be assigned to more complex jobs below a hundred feet, for which he must breathe mixed gas in order to avoid suffering the effects of nitrogen narcosis while working with heavy machinery. A full-time mixed-gas diver can earn more than $100,000 a year. He will perform jobs at ever greater depths, with higher degrees of technical difficulty, until his diving supervisor deems him ready to graduate to saturation diving. Sat divers can make $200,000 a year. Sat’s where it’s at.

And it's great fun.

Most divers have horror stories. Paul Spark, who is currently a supervisor on a dive support vessel in the North Sea, worked as a diver for twenty-nine years. During his very first dive, in 1977, to repair a blow-out preventer 410 feet below the surface, his diving bell flooded with water, almost drowning him and his partner. Later he was very nearly crushed by a thousand-pound blind flange, a plate used to seal the end of a pipe; a “rather large wolffish” bit his foot, drawing blood; and while performing salvage work on the Kursk, the nuclear-powered Russian submarine that sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, drowning all 118 aboard, there was a loud explosion. Spark had been using a high-pressure water jet to bore holes in the submarine’s pressure hull when it occurred. He was unharmed, and returned, dazed, to his diving vessel. He never found out what caused the explosion.

So when you finally call home, there will be plenty of stories to avoid those awkward pauses.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

So your mommy and your teachers said you can be anything you want to be, to which you said, I want to be an astronaut. Well reality bites, the US space program devolves and dreams fade.
But buck up bubby, there's an alternative, you can be an aquanaut.
You can be a Saturation Diver.


And it's great fun.

So when you finally call home, there will be plenty of stories to avoid those awkward pauses.

A friend of mine once posted something about not taking any form of transportation that you can't walk home from if it breaks down. I think this might be a similar situation.

[busterb]

This guy, Steven Mis????? ovich, set,at the time a world record for underwater pipe welds. He stopped diving when someone cut his air off. I welded with him for Brown & Root. Think was 1979.
Not too long after, he passed away from Leukemia. Think his estate got bucks from B&R

[xoxoxoBruce]

Pictures of kids in 30 counties with their favorite toys.

[glatt]

Excellent link, Bruce.

I'm struck by the different economic levels and the houses just as much as by the toys.

Look at all that insulation in the wall of the Swedish house! And the dirty (actually coated with earth) sheets in one of those mud huts in Africa. And all the kids are proud of their toys, regardless of economic level.

[Gravdigr]

Lifespan Calculator

Only 13 questions.

Accuracy? I'll let ya know in about 15 years.

Congratulations??? I don't think so, Scooter.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'm already dead.