Posted by SLANG on August 13, 2001 at 14:23:17:
In Reply to: Picking and choosing which *rules* apply posted by MHK on August 13, 2001 at 11:09:34:
Mike:
I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for with this post. Are you really wanting to initiate a discussion of why some "rules" are adhered to and some are ignored? Or are you trying to convince everyone of the uselessness of requiring visual EANx labels?
I think the former is a good topic, although I would be more interested in the responses by proponents of DIR than anyone else. You guys seem to have the most rigid beliefs of any divers out there. Apparently, to follow and believe in DIR, some rules are sacred (to the point where if one does not follow them exactly, they are excommunicated from DIR-dom), and some rules are foolish (and those that "blindly" support such rules are subject to derision).
If you really are wanting to discuss the silly policy of requiring big green labels to get EANx fills, all I can say is I agree with you. It does remind me of one time when I was much younger though. I used to work summers doing custom grain harvesting with relatives back all over the mid-west. Being the youngest on the crew, I usually got stuck having to re-fuel all the equipment every morning. We'd been working this one farm for 2 weeks, and their fuel stores were in 2 big above ground storage tanks; the diesel was in the red tank, the gasoline was in the green tank. Even though I thought this was a little odd, the tanks were clearly marked and I had been using them for weeks. That didn't stop me from going out there one morning and filling all the diesel tractors with gas, and all the gasoline combines with diesel. It was early in the AM, I was tired, wasn't thinking, etc. That doesn't change the fact that, to this day, I remember how stupid I felt when that $180,000 tractor I was operating blew the heads right off, and I had to go tell the rest of the crew the mistake I'd made before they started running their machines.
I'd sure hate to feel that stupid again, especially if it was the last thoughts I ever had, as my vision tunneled and went black, before I started convulsing from Ox Tox, -- as I realized I'd grabbed the wrong tank, and that my death might have been prevented with one of those stupid labels.
Then again, it might just show that no amount of labeling can overcome stupidity.