Very strange gift = Tormenting the Cat!
We've had a relationship with BHP (once known back here as 'The Big Australian', and now known as BHP Billiton), for years and years and years. We've known them as shareholders enjoying the benefits of Australia's mineral boom; and when I kept a chair warm in the Microsoft Melbourne office as an enthusiastic young(ish) large account sales rep BHP was my customer and I worked with them on their global PC software standardisation project implementing Microsoft Office worldwide across the BHP world. Not everyone liked it, but you can't please everyone all the time...
Today we received the strangest item in the mail. It was an odd-shaped manila envelope from BHP Billiton that contained a laser pointer pen! It was in a neat metal box that was printed with Beijing Olympics 2008 logos. A laser pen!
(I wondered if BHP Billiton had bought a whole bunch of these items and for some odd reason now couldn't distribute them to friends and family going to Beijing. Perhaps the temptation to write 'Free Tibet' on the roof of the birds nest was too great to risk, or having 'Falun Gong' scrawled in red laser light inside the Water Cube concerned the BHP Billiton execs - wouldn't want the Chinese to stop buying our good Aussie iron ore, would we?)
There were no instructions provided with the pen, other than a tiny sticker that told how to remove the small plastic insulator in the battery compartment. It did have a small laser light warning tag on the side of it, which was the only indication that we saw that the item contained more than just a pen!
Good friend Fang has wangled himself a cool job at the Uni of Adelaide and has friends in the photonics lab where they get paid to do neat stuff with lasers, glass fibre and all kinds of things that you wouldn't let your children play with. Unrelated to this interesting gift that we received today, Fang and I were recently talking about lasers, laser pointers, and their potential for serious tissue damage. I think the government is considering banning the import of these devices as some fools keep shining them at aircraft pilots, which is not appreciated by the boys and girls in the cockpit. And an article in the newspaper recently told of a party in Russia (I think it was) where a laser light show designed to illuminate inanimate items was somehow shown on the partygoers dancing on the floor, resulting in permanent retina damage to something like 30 of them! Permanent eye damage. Read all about it!
Egads! Apparently, many of these little laser pointers coming into Australia are up to 10 times more powerful than their rating on the package. Quality control not exactly fantastic? Some of these items are pretty dangerous.
Back to the gift received from BHP Billiton - the laser pen doesn't shine the laser light from the pointy end of the pen - it comes out of the TOP of the pen! The end that is closer to your eyes when you normally hold the pen in your hand. Two little buttons on the pen - one turns on the red laser pointer, and the other turns-on a small white LED light (which for all I know could actually be the radioactive output from a small fission reactor in the end of the pen!)
Okay, don't panic, I thought. And once I got comfortable with the idea that I was holding a pen that could put my eye out, at least virtually, I thought I would see what it could do.
...Here's the part where the cat comes into the story....
Did you know how long you can keep a cat busy chasing a little red dot around the floor, up the walls and around and around in circle? From exhaustive personal experience I can tell you that it can keep a cat busy for a LONG TIME. But we were very careful to avoid any chance of eye contact with the little red dot. It's one thing to exercise the cat, and a completely different matter to blind dear puss.
Cats are fast, and they aren't used to chasing things that can outrun them. I was very impressed to see how fast our 10 year old torty could accelerate as she raced to catch-up with Super Dot zipping across the floor boards.
I wouldn't really say 'tormenting' was what we did to the cat - she could have stopped at any time. I mean, no one was forcing her to do it, were they?! But I did notice that the cat is having a very good sleep tonight.
Why did BHP Billiton send such an unexpected item as a shareholder's gift? Got me. Very strange indeed.
Today we received the strangest item in the mail. It was an odd-shaped manila envelope from BHP Billiton that contained a laser pointer pen! It was in a neat metal box that was printed with Beijing Olympics 2008 logos. A laser pen!
(I wondered if BHP Billiton had bought a whole bunch of these items and for some odd reason now couldn't distribute them to friends and family going to Beijing. Perhaps the temptation to write 'Free Tibet' on the roof of the birds nest was too great to risk, or having 'Falun Gong' scrawled in red laser light inside the Water Cube concerned the BHP Billiton execs - wouldn't want the Chinese to stop buying our good Aussie iron ore, would we?)
There were no instructions provided with the pen, other than a tiny sticker that told how to remove the small plastic insulator in the battery compartment. It did have a small laser light warning tag on the side of it, which was the only indication that we saw that the item contained more than just a pen!
Good friend Fang has wangled himself a cool job at the Uni of Adelaide and has friends in the photonics lab where they get paid to do neat stuff with lasers, glass fibre and all kinds of things that you wouldn't let your children play with. Unrelated to this interesting gift that we received today, Fang and I were recently talking about lasers, laser pointers, and their potential for serious tissue damage. I think the government is considering banning the import of these devices as some fools keep shining them at aircraft pilots, which is not appreciated by the boys and girls in the cockpit. And an article in the newspaper recently told of a party in Russia (I think it was) where a laser light show designed to illuminate inanimate items was somehow shown on the partygoers dancing on the floor, resulting in permanent retina damage to something like 30 of them! Permanent eye damage. Read all about it!
Egads! Apparently, many of these little laser pointers coming into Australia are up to 10 times more powerful than their rating on the package. Quality control not exactly fantastic? Some of these items are pretty dangerous.
Back to the gift received from BHP Billiton - the laser pen doesn't shine the laser light from the pointy end of the pen - it comes out of the TOP of the pen! The end that is closer to your eyes when you normally hold the pen in your hand. Two little buttons on the pen - one turns on the red laser pointer, and the other turns-on a small white LED light (which for all I know could actually be the radioactive output from a small fission reactor in the end of the pen!)
Okay, don't panic, I thought. And once I got comfortable with the idea that I was holding a pen that could put my eye out, at least virtually, I thought I would see what it could do.
...Here's the part where the cat comes into the story....
Did you know how long you can keep a cat busy chasing a little red dot around the floor, up the walls and around and around in circle? From exhaustive personal experience I can tell you that it can keep a cat busy for a LONG TIME. But we were very careful to avoid any chance of eye contact with the little red dot. It's one thing to exercise the cat, and a completely different matter to blind dear puss.
Cats are fast, and they aren't used to chasing things that can outrun them. I was very impressed to see how fast our 10 year old torty could accelerate as she raced to catch-up with Super Dot zipping across the floor boards.
I wouldn't really say 'tormenting' was what we did to the cat - she could have stopped at any time. I mean, no one was forcing her to do it, were they?! But I did notice that the cat is having a very good sleep tonight.
Why did BHP Billiton send such an unexpected item as a shareholder's gift? Got me. Very strange indeed.
posted by Rick's Rambles at 9:17 PM
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