Hey guys,

Guess I started off on the wrong foot. Your patience is appreciated.

Keep on truckin'

 

np...........

 

Could you re-post this in English, using at least minimal punctuation?

 

I'm in Tulsa, OK. I guess I should say that they haven't started actually putting the signs up yet, but they are supposed to be. I haven't heard anything about it in a while. Maybe the politicians have come down with a bad case of common sense and scrapped the idea.

 

I'll take Spanish, German, or any written language over the stupid "pictographs" found on so many modern products. Mankind recognized the problems with such forms of communication thousands of years ago, and invented written language. One discussion of this issue may be found here:

http://www.afternight.com/runes/runes5.htm.

In our modern-day zeal to create products that can be operated equally well across languages and cultures, we regress thousands of years and create labels that are difficult or impossible to interpret for everyone.

As an example, I rented an Ingersoll Rand vibratory compactor last December (this is a fancy form of a "steamroller"). The engine was fairly loud, and added to this was the steel drum making a horrible racket on the crushed rock. So I wore hearing protection as I was operating it. Halfway down my road, I noticed a warning light glowing on the dash. On the light was one of these miserable "pictographs". It looked like an arrow with a bunch of dots underneath it. I couldn't figure out what it was trying to tell me. I supposed it looked a little like a thermometer boiling in a pot of water. Engine overheat? (nope, there's a guage for that, in the green), no oil pressure? (nope, that has a guage too), hydraulic fluid temp? Maybe, but the drum is working OK.

So I pulled off the earcups and throttled down the engine. I could then hear a faint "whirring" sound, and finally realized that the key switch was stuck and the starter was still spinning, even though the engine had now been running for several minutes. Turning the key back from "start" to "run", caused the starter to shut off and the light went out.

About 10 minutes later, while driving the thing, I finally realized the arrow and dots on the warning light was intended to be a picture of a rocket taking off. From this I guess the operator is supposed to realize this was a warning about the starter. Starter running = "blastoff", I guess. Had the warning been in Spanish or German, I could have looked it up in an online dictionary. But the "rocket" symbol? Utterly worthless as a means of communication.

On a somewhat related note: how about the pictographs on the signs pointing towards the public library? (It's a picture of an open book with an arrow pointing the way). What use is a library to a prospective customer that can't even read the word "library"? When I first saw this, while traveling out of state 14 years ago, I thought it was so funny that I took a picture of it. Now, you see these signs everywhere.

 

[QUOTE=fefarms]In our modern-day zeal to create products that can be operated equally well across languages and cultures, we regress thousands of years and create labels that are difficult or impossible to interpret for everyone.As an example, I rented an Ingersoll Rand vibratory compactor last December (this is a fancy form of a "steamroller"). QUOTE]Bobcat ,which is also now an Ingersoll Rand company does the same stuipid game on their skid steer loaders. There are too many different symbols on the dash and are not very user friendly, quite the opposite. A $ 50,000 machine should be better designed I think!

 

Thanks guys for settling your differences without intervention. Please keep the politics out of this thread tho. Stick to the topic at hand, "Garage pet peeves".

 

Another one I have a big problem with is when my wife and daughter come into the garage with bare feet or socks only. I told them hundreds of times why it is dangerous for them to do this and they still fail to listen. They have slowed done on the instances of this since they both picked up 3 or 4 metal slivers the same day. ( Was grinding rivets and drilling for the new suspension.)

Chris

 

I just built a new garage with that beautiful cement floor. I just walk on egg shells to keepit looking new. Putting cardboard under every thing that drips, not spilling oil or anti freeze, i even made pieces of metal to catch slag off my welding.
I THINK IM PARANOID

 

MY biggest pet peeve is sharing the space, period. I have become an antisocial sum-puppy in recent years, since building my farm shop. I graduated from the driveway to a claptrap garage, to a nice heated floor garage bay at my in-laws' (until my old S-10 leaked a quart of tranny fluid on their floor, which as I was told, absolutely was NOT acceptable!) Now I have a beautiful shop that I can't ever get MY trucks into because something else is torn apart up there. And on the odd Saturday I have a chance to get something in a bay, I usually have to put up with one or more of my employees pestering me about where the farm's such and such tool might have gotten off to. (I have a major investment in "personal" tools that I keep under lock and key in a separate room of my shop, and they have access to the farm's cheaper stuff......) Gee, Festus, I don't know, I don't use them, and can't you see I am BUSY? A couple of weeks ago, I had to resort to parting out a '61 F100 in my driveway because I couldn't get in the shop, and one of my guys actually came up to me (mind you, I was sitting on the floor of a gutted cab, which was sitting NEXT TO a pile of iron that used to be framerails) and asked "what are you doing, taking this apart?". Hmmmm, lets see, you saw it come in on a trailer yesterday as a (mostly) complete truck, everything that was INSIDE the cab is now OUTSIDE the cab, and I just cut the frame into six pieces....... nope, I'm changing the oil! That, and why can't oxygen and acetylene cylinders run out at the same time, and preferably when someone ELSE is using them?

 

im sitting here reading about all the complaints everyone has with their wife , girlfriend, otherhalf and i have to say that in that case im very lucky. my fiance helps me clean and pick up tools when im done she fetches tools that i need while im working and she isnt afraid to get greasey helping me she even checks all her vehicles fluids, pressure in the tires and inspects her vehicle on her own. when we first met she knew nothing about vehicles or harleys, now she has even fixed vehicles and bikes for guys who were stranded and didnt have a clue. now if i can quit dragging my feet and set a date {been together for 15 yrs} o by the way my pet peeve is people who smoke {and im a smoker} throwing their cig butts on my shop floor