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well, barb, i'm still not sure about the "little old lady." how about
"little old man" (which i most often think about when i get behind
a slow driver. :)paula
On Fri, 10 Jun 1994, Paula Steinhart wrote:
> what's a "little lady" type? just want to be able to follow the
> discussion. paula
> On Fri, 10 Jun 1994 BurkBrick -at- AOL -dot- COM wrote:
> > Concerning Should/shall and Military Manuals, Barb (BurkBrick) Wrote:
> > >Well, speaking as one of the grunts <smile>--
> >
> > Gulp - well, at least he's smiling. :^)
> >
> > >Most of the MilSpecs for field service documentation
> > >REQUIRE_IMI_REQUIRE_ the direct imperative
> > >"Turn the switch off -and a picture of the switch."
> >
> > Wish I had found this spec back then so I could have argued with my co-write
> > more authoritatively! He was one of those "been doin' it this way for 30
> > years, little lady" types - tough to fight unless you have all your ducks
> > lined up in a row, and even then they'll find a reason not to change.
> >
> > >We Smart Grunts in the Cavalry or SIgnal Corps might
> > >tend to be offended by "The Operator shall..." and I do
> > >believe I have seen an entire Infantry platoon wandering
> > >the motor pool looking for Sergeant Stumblebumm
> > >to switch off the scout-compartment heater in a
> > >Bradley Fighting Vehicle (Sgt S being the
> > >designated "Operator" dontcha know...)
> >
> > Interesting you should mention scout-compartment heaters - guess what I was
> > writing about? You got it - heaters for "tracked army vehicles." The army is
> > (or was) retrofitting all tanks with these new heaters because of potential
> > fire hazards from the old one.
> >
> > I used to have an article (from an industry journal, which I can no longer
> > find, of course) that described an incident in which a heater leaked fuel,
> > which caught on fire. One of the army personnel (isn't that much better than
> > grunt :^)?) grabbed a fire extinguisher, which didn't work. He grabbed
> > another one, which also didn't work. He got the hell out. Fire spread. Tank
> > was next to munitions. Big boom. Several deaths, many $$s of taxpayers money
> > up in
> > smoke. The article covered the details much better, of course, but if you
> > have army experience I'm sure you
> > don't need a lot of clarification.
> >
> > I suppose this story isn't completely relevant to the discussion at hand, bu
> > it reminds me how important many things we do are.
> >
> > Barb
> >
