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I got up a little earlier today. I would've gotten more sleep had I not gotten up in the middle of the night to try to solve the generalized cubic equation. I was unsuccessful, but I came across some interesting properties, but I digress.
I went shopping for a helmet today and came up with bupkus. Seems like they were out of stock of the colour I wanted, but he told me that a new shipment was coming in tomorrow and that he'd give me a ring when they come in.
I also went to "on-hill" training tonight. Well, it's supposed to be on-hill, but the hill was closed, so we did it at our usual haunt and went out for drinks afterward. You know, one of the instructors is pretty cute. I wonder if she's single.
Oh yeah, I heard two intersting stories while drinking. The first is about Dalmatians. Why are they associated with firetrucks and firemen? Well, apparently (as the story goes) way back in the old days, the fire departments weren't run my the municipal government. Instead, they were run by insurance companies, and if you wanted to have your house hosed down in case of fire, you'd have to buy fire insurance from one of the insurance companies. Now, there may be two houses next to each other insured by different companies, so that when one house goes up in smoke, the call goes out and gets routed to the wrong fire department. They check their books and redirect them to the right fire department. Meanwhile, they send their own fire truck, and release their dalmatians to intercept the other fire truck and scare the horses and slow down their response time. Therefore, while the house is burning, the insurance representative from the first fire deparment will be talking to the owner of the house, telling them that they could extinguish the fire since their truck was already there, as long as they sign up with them. So basically, the dalmatians were used to sabotage their competition.
The second story was about some of the first generation Chinese families that have moved into the area. It seems as if there have been cases when their house would be on fire, but they wouldn't allow the firemen to enter the house, saying something about not having money. Now, someone did some research into this and discovered that in some Asian countries, the fire department was so corrupt, that you'd have to pay the firemen, once they put out the flames (or once they got there, I can't remember which). So, this is why they didn't want the firemen to help extinguish the fire. Strange no?
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