Bureaucracy FAIL

I will never understand the reasoning that drives the local elementary school to send home field trip permission forms that not only require me to fill out anew for each field trip medical information that the school nurse's office already has on file, but also require me to fill out destination, date, time, and trip cost information from the front of the form TO ELSEWHERE ON THE FORM before returning the form to the school.  WTF is the POINT of the school requiring me to inform the school of data that the school has just proven to me that it already has?

The medical information, I can almost understand; some of it (the insurance, say) could have changed, and we could have forgotten to notify the school.  But even that section could be marked "Fill out this information if there has been a change" — then the teacher could just glance at that section and, if any of it is filled out, know the nurse's office needs to be informed of the change, and otherwise just go with what's on file.

But making me fill out the back of the form to tell the school information it just told me on the front of the form?  That's a ludicrous waste of everyone's time.  What are they going to do, accidentally send my kid on a field trip to a Titan missile silo in North Dakota by mistake instead of the Seacoast Science Center if I don't copy the information from the front to the back?

In which we get dead lucky

As previously mentioned, we've been doing much maintenance lately, not all of it planned.  (The contractor is scheduled to start work on the front entryway Saturday morning, by the way, and be done in about a week.)  One of the more recent repairs was to the garage door.

Quick:  ( What's wrong with this picture? )

These are the bottom corner brackets from our garage door. Don't look too good, do they?  The bottom pair of rollers were totally shot too, and the bolts were badly enough rusted that we had to split one of the nuts with a cold-chisel to get it off. The sharp edge on that worn-down bollard had also cut more than half-way through the lift cable.

The garage door is original to the house, making the door 35 years old.  It's a Stanley Strapline door.  That entire line of doors was discontinued, oh ... about 30 years ago.  Replacement parts?  It is to laugh.

Fortunately, we happened to ask just the right guy at Lowes after replacement parts, who happened to refer us to a particular overhead-door company in Laconia that might have parts.  And, when we went down there, the door installer for the company just happened by sheer chance to have two disassembled Stanley Strapline doors in the back of his van that he'd taken out and replaced that morning.  They were headed for the dumpster.

Between the two doors, we were able to salvage two almost- bottom brackets and two serviceable rollers.  A new pair of lift cables (which are universal), a handful of new stainless-steel nutes, bolts and washers (since those bottom brackets live in a fairly hostile environment, exposed to salt splash in winter), some lithium grease, a lot of struggling and muttering and some minor adjustment of the garage door frame trim, and we have a mostly-restored garage door that can now be lifted with one finger.

Of course, the next time we need parts for it, we're screwed.  But at that point we'll almost certainly be looking to just tear out and replace the entire door.

---

Just as an extra freebie, ( this is the re-hung gate on the main deck. )

Despicable

Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

Ed Morrissey says "despicable".  I have no better word.