Friday, June 21, 2013

My gorilla moment

The speaker was talking about magic and how people see things (you can look this up on You Tube to see the video). The audience of 50 people are to count how many times in 1 minute they bounce pass several balls between them.

The passing begins. At the end of 1 minute the speaker calls on the audience to tell him how many passes they counted. Number range all over the place from 35 to 50. Then the speaker asks, "How many of you saw the gorilla?." What? No hands go up. The group is puzzled and he says watch the playback of the video on the big screen. Sure enough, about 30 seconds into the passing a guy in a gorilla suit walks across the stage right through the group as the balls bounce! No one saw the gorilla.

Well the job at hand was to put some steel siding on my garage. No gorilla moment here.
This should be easy because I learned my lesson about the unequal roof pitch last year doing the other end. I mean who builds a garage using 12 foot rafters on one side and 13 foot rafters on the other side? Have to give them credit for making good use of used material I guess. Anyway I was ready this year. Measuring 128.5 at the peak and 112 on the short side (I wrote the numbers down on a scrap so as not to forget them) I cut my first sheet and put it up. Nice fit.

Now for the second piece. I knew the peak distance would be the same and the short side would be a bit longer. Yep, 115. So I took out my scrap and wrote this number down and than circled the two numbers I would be using this time. Pretty clear to me. No gorilla moment for me.
I dutifully follow the old adage, "measure twice, cut once" and cut the piece.

Dang! Sure enough I had measured out 112" not the 115 that was in the circle. How could I not see the (gorilla) 115 in the circle? (The extra lines show my struggle as I tried to correct my "gorilla moment"!)
Or maybe it was sun stroke?

But I got'er  now and can proceed... as soon as it stops raining. Dang those pesky gorillas.



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