lenora_rose: (Goblet and inhabitant)
[personal profile] lenora_rose
Er, hi. There seem to be some new people reading. Welcome.

(Confession: This always gives me the thought, "Uh, oh, am I in trouble now? I'm going to be boring and they'll hate me." Especially sicne most of you look further along on this writing thing.)

New or longtime, out of curiousity, what drew you here?

_______________________________________

Not much to say abotu real life. I got in the essay about the Faerie Queene, though I finished about two minutes before class and had to get it printed out after.

Confession: We only read the one book of the poem, and it wasn't that painful. It had bits that dragged (Yeah, we got that Elizabeth is, like, teh cool) and bits I read through fairly happily. It wasn't good enough to make me want to read the whole (I read bits of books one and two for the essay, but we're talking about 3 10 stanza segments, only one of which I referred to.) but it wasn't so bad that if I ever had to, I'd run screaming.

But the essay was murder. It fought me like few pieces of writing ever have, even essays I didn't like. Funny, because I knew much of what I was going to say in advance - and it still didn't want to get pinned to the paper.

Otherwise:

Had a good get together with a pair of friends (and a baby) on Thursday. This would be the second time [livejournal.com profile] _aura_ has threatened to give me henna in the last two weeks without it actually happening, but both times, it's because we played board games and chatted instead.

Sunday was Siegound's birthday party (His birthday's today), which meant getting together with friends I otherwise hadn't seen in a while and having much fun. Siegound and Rachelle's best man was, shall we say, boisterous, and usually enlivens things.

Some archery has been done but my focus has been iffy and thus my shooting has.

It doesn't help that I have myself actual muscle aches playing with the Wii.

The headache progresses apace. The eyestrain from forcing out the essay Did Not Help, but it seems otherwise at a low ebb.

Fiction writing? Not since the last journal entry. Let's get Friday's quiz out of the way first. I've written four pages of study notes and got through an eighth of the material. Though I've been thinking hard about this stuff. A question obviously not related to Soldier:

Anyone actually had to *use* a fire extinguisher? I've picked one up, gone through the technique except for the spraying part, so i know the weight and feel and where on the fire to point, but it's the spraying stuff I need to know. If someone tried to target as small a space as possible around a specific stack of paper (Roughly centre of a 3' x 6' work desk space; all the obvious thigns in the vicinity are compressed wood and papers; there's no computer in the area, so the extinguisher would probably be water or foam), how much of the desk would be coated? Even water extinguishers have some other chemical content; would this ruin any other papers in the vicinity (On the desk, on other tables in the office) or would things merely "soaked" or caught with a sidelong bit of spray be salvageable?
From: [identity profile] senekal.livejournal.com
One of the more common types isn't actually foam at all but a chemical powder.

It's a really horrid yellow colour and gets all over everything. Looks like sulfur.

Much more common than foam at least in industrial areas.

You can be fairly accurate with them but they spread so if you sprayed a standard industrial one (rather than one of the little home ones like I have under my sink) it would coat/soak the entire desk. They're designed to put out fires, not be neat.

Date: 2007-02-22 08:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] adrian-turtle.livejournal.com
I've used fire extinguishers several times for training, and once to put out a small lab fire. Water-based extinguishers have a kind of detergent in the water, but it's mostly just the jet of water that ruins stuff that gets in the way. Even if you aim the jet at a small fire, there is always splashing and blowback. Stacks of papers get knocked over...if there is a small bookcase on the desk, it might get knocked over as well. When papers get soaked in soapy water, the ink often dissolves, at least partly. It depends on the quality of the ink and how completely it was soaked. Any given document can plausibly be saved, destroyed, or reclaimed with great effort and expense after freeze-drying.

The foam-based extinguishers are used for electrical fires, and because they do less permanent damage to porous materials. Cleanup is still slow and expensive, because the foam dries to a horrible powder that goes everywhere. But carpets don't mildew, and the ink in old legal documents and books doesn't smear.

With a water extinguisher, the whole desk would be covered in soapy water. With foam, you *might* be able to aim for the center and back, and leave a small clear space in front. But it is better firefighting technique to raster the foam across the whole desk, in case bits of burning material are thrown from the center fire towards you.

Profile

lenora_rose: (Default)
lenora_rose

March 2020

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
1516 1718192021
22232425262728
293031    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 12th, 2025 04:15 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios