Bad Day Diving?

So you think your work day was bad? Or all you need is some serious time beneath the waves, and some extra water pressure to squeeze out the stress?

Well, you may want to reconsider after reading this story I came across.





Take this job and . . .
(Surface supplied diving (SSD) is an alternative to SCUBA diving. It consists of lowering divers into the water on a support platform and supplying them with breathing gas (air or another gas mixture) through a flexible hose attached to a diving helmet, which is connected to an "umbilical" that supplies breathing gas, two-way communications, a depth measurement tube, and (optionally) hot water to warm the dive suit. The editors thought you might share a bit of humor attached to one incident.)
Next time you have a bad day at work think of Rob, a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an e-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on your FM dial in Ft. Wayne Indiana, who was sponsoring a Worst Job Experience contest. Needless to say she won.
Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother . . . Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all.
Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wetsuit. This time of the year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature, then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working is take the hose, and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So of course I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish, and pumped it into my suit. Now since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it. However the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch. I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.
I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompressions stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.
When I arrived at the surface I was wearing nothing, but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water. The medic with tears of laughter running down his face handed me a tube of cream, and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So next time you’re having a bad day at work think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt. Now repeat to yourself, " I love my job, I love my job, I love my job . . . "
Love, Rob

Do you know that that story has been doing the rounds for awhile?? :)

Well, at least now he has a great story to tell.

Now, to my tech. duties. How about a filter that will prevent something like this from happening. We are talking about a $20,000 piece of equipment here. It really does not sound like rocket science.

I will tell you what, for $20,000 I will custom make anyone a complete water heating unit with a filter and all. Hey for that much, I will think up a bunch of upgrades!