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Moved from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
  • Greg's sewer cover: actually, it's a damn classy pic, and worth visiting just for that. Did you pay a professional photographer to visit, Greg? <smile> Tony (talk) 06:03, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks Tony. I indeed lucked out with the lighting. There were three sewer covers to choose from when I went outside: one was completely in the shade, another was completely in the sun, and the one I settled on was half-covered in shade (from a pine tree). While taking the picture, I could see that the partial shade gave it a bit of *something* one doesn’t get from the standard “all-sun” lighting typically used for this subject. Three minutes later, and it would have been completely in the shade too. Although I rotated the image a half degree in Photoshop to get the word “SEWER” perfectly aligned, I pretty much blew that picture out my butt as an example of ultra-trivia. Funny: only two hours after I posted it in my essay, Carcharoth added it to Sanitary sewer. Greg L (talk) 21:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, it got added to the sewer article because it was a good picture (the composition, mainly the visual symmetry, is excellent). If it had been a poor-quality picture, I probably wouldn't have bothered. I think the fact that you made the effort to sweep the pine needles off the cover was also helpful and made the picture better than it would have been with pine needles on it. Some photographers I know would have missed that trick. Hmm. It's depressing how poor our composition (visual arts) article is. It covers some bits well and totally fails in other areas. Carcharoth (talk) 21:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • You could eat eggs off that sewer cover, to use a favourite phrase of a long-deceased aunt. I envisage an army of city employees continually buffing and polishing with motorised machines. Have you alerted Category:Sewer Cover to the existence of the pic? Tony (talk) 00:32, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Barnstar of Good Humor
I must admit I had an audible chuckle whilst reading this humour page. Nicely done. –xeno (talk) 13:10, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Awesome. Not only is this quite funny, but it makes an important point quite well. Great work and thanks for making my day! --The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 18:17, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the time you took to write this, Greg L. You made your point humorously using a very engaging writing style. Plumleaff (talk) 20:40, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sewer cover stories

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Suntag:"When I was 5, my older brother made me stand barefoot on a sewer cover when it was 102°F outside. I ended up crying with burnt soles and my brother got in trouble with mom." -- Suntag ☼ 14:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon: "My father was the Fire Marshall for the city of Buena Park, CA. One day he came home and told us about a call he was on. It seems that some kids had figured out that if you pour just the right amount of gasoline down the little hole in the manhole cover, wait a while, and then drop a match in using fireplace tongs, you can blow the cover up into the air. My brother and I tried for hours with no success. I always wondered whether he was just playing a joke on us or whether this could actually work. this makes me suspect that it can." --Guy Macon (talk) 10:59, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another Sewer Cover Story:

Year ago I worked for Gyyr/Odetics on time-lapse VCRs for security cameras. We got a hold of a tape from a security camera in a jewelry store looking out the front window. In the foreground was a display of jewelry (all fake). Someone came up to the window and threw a brick at it. The brick bounced off. After several failed attempts he managed to pry up a manhole cover and hit the window with it, breaking the glass. He scooped up the worthless "jewelry", took two steps, and fell into the hole he had just uncovered. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:55, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some counter points

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I noticed someone linked to ring, and that is indeed a good example of a pointless link. But there is a phrase here where the utlity of a link is, I think, genuinely debatable. Riser ring (a link I added). I think this refers to the riser part of a sewer system, the vertical bit that leads from the sewer below to the manhole cover above. If you look at the definition of riser on wiktionary: wikt:riser, you have "A conduit or path between floors of a building for placement of telephone, networking, and other utility cables." That is, I think, the closest in meaning to a sewer riser. Risers are mentioned at Fire hydrant and Outfall and Dry riser (is this where the terminology for the sewers comes from?), so I think Greg has, maybe unintentionally, pointed out something where Wikipedia's coverage of technology can be improved. But in reality, I think "riser ring" is misleading here. Why not refer to the "sewer access shaft"?

Also, the trivia section is over the top. The manufacturer of the sewer cover, the material it is made of, and its diameter, are not trivia. The later history of the foundry (the "April 2004" point), the details about ductile iron, and the distance from the factory, are indeed trivia, but mixing those up with other stuff weakens the message this essay should, IMO, be sending. Carcharoth (talk) 06:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest the detail about ductile iron has answered the question I've often asked myself ("Eh?") when I noticed the word "ductile" on manhole covers, etc. So does that count as pointless trivia? Even the detail about distance from the factory may not be trivial - are older manhole covers generally installed closer to their factories with newer ones manufactured and delivered further away (with concomitant questions about transportation, "global warming", loss of local jobs...)
Really, Greg, the Trivia section is the least trivial part of this article. Real trivia is more pointless even than this. Like, errr... "The head founder of the factory where this was made has a daughter called Hortense", "There were no sewer covers visible in Season 8, Episode 14 of Cheers". Tonywalton Talk 00:13, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Carcharoth, if you look in the manufacturer’s catalog of manhole covers, they call them riser rings.

    As regards the “trivia” on this page, you missed my point. It wasn’t my intention to be adding trivia to this page; it was to over‑link the page. Part & parcel with over‑linking is the practice of linking to dates for no other reason than to take the reader to a list of events that have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of the linking article. To that extent, (going to date-related pages containing information that has nothing whatsoever to do with sewer covers), that I consider to be trivia. All the date-related pages contain historical trivia. There’s nothing wrong with those articles; it’s just that links should always be germane and topical to the subject matter. Greg L (talk) 03:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates

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The geographical coordinates of this article appear to point at a place in a forest in France, with no obvious sign of houses or sewer covers nearby. *Dan T.* (talk) 02:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • The latitude is real. The longitude is exactly on the prime meridian, which I intended to be interpreted as “null”. I did it that way to retain some measure of privacy even though I have it all over my userpage that I live in Spokane. But I don’t disclose my home address. It’s noteworthy that a Wikipedian, a physics student in Germany as I recall, e-mailed me his guess for the intersection at which I live. He wasn’t too far off. I e-mailed him back saying he must have integrated some clues off my userpage, or some other technique besides the brute-force use of the geographic coordinates on this page. Indeed, he simply brute-forced it, using only clues from here. Greg L (talk) 00:39, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good work

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Loved this. I think you missed out on some opportunites to link though. Did you make the date formats inconsistent on purpose? Dabomb87 (talk) 04:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the sake of completeness...

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For the sake of completeness, what do the initials "FCO DUC" mean?  HWV258  05:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably "Foundry Company Ductile" though this needs references. Tonywalton Talk 23:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article states "Some pine needles were swept off his sewer cover before the photograph was taken." What species of pine? Or was it spruce? Or maybe fir? This is WP:OR, surely, and this article, useful as it is, should be speedily deleted because if it. Tonywalton Talk 23:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Actually, if you click on the picture and click on that to see the enlargement, you will see that it is “IFCO DUC”, which means Inland Foundry Company (for the first four letters). For the last group of three letters, DUC, I assume that it stands for ductile. Not sure though. One of these days, I need to call East Jordan Ironworks (the new owners) and find out. Greg L (talk) 23:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    P.S. BTW, as for the species of pine, it’s Ponderosa. Mature Ponderosa Pine can be a magnificent looking tree with a reddish bark that has large, flat scales; think “Bonanza”. Many of the pictures of Ponderosa Pine you see on the Web are Christmas-tree-like shrubs where you can’t see the trunk. But when you have mature trees, you have trunks measuring one to two meters in circumference. Mature Ponderosa with reddish bark, IMO, is a “manly” tree—like my barbecued hamburgers. However, most of the Ponderosa around here isn’t fully mature and has a much less attractive, rougher, grey bark. In suburban areas, where home owners limb the trees to remove dead branches, bare trunks can go up 10 meters before you get to the first branch.

    Ponderosa is a dime a dozen in these parts because it is the indigenous tree since before man arrived. Ponderosa trees went from horizon to horizon back when Lewis & Clark came through. The original Lewis & Clark trail is only a mile from my house; a stone monument marks the exact spot—in the parking lot of a restaurant. Still, you only have to drive a few kilometers to get to virgin forest around here.

    I updated the page with the fact that it was Ponderosa Pine needles I swept off the thing. Greg L (talk) 00:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Guy Macon/On the Diameter of the Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house

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So, do I get the coveted Sewer Cover Barnstar for On the Diameter of the Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house? It took me many, many nanoseconds to write... --Guy Macon (talk) 20:56, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(...Sound of Crickets...)
I would hate to end my life with an obituary that says "despite his best efforts,[Citation Needed] Guy never achieved his lifelong dream of being awarded The Greg L Sewer Cover Barnstar"...   :(   --Guy Macon (talk) 16:45, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What are we trying to say here?

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The article lede opens with

The sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house, also known as sewer cover and manhole cover

And so first of all we want to point out that

The sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house, also known as sewer cover...

is a tautology.

This being so, and given the the use of "and" instead of "or" indicates that meaning of the phrase to be taken as

The sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house, also known as "sewer cover and manhole cover"

which violates NOTCENSORED I suppose, because every bad thing does. So the question is, do people actually say "Say, that sewer cover and manhole cover looks fine" or "Don't trip on that sewer cover and manhole cover". This seems odd, and I think it's more likely that people say "I'll have a ham and cheese on rye, ranch dressing instead of mayo please" or "this movie is boring, let's try something else" (or even, in extreme cases, "AAAAAAAAAAAAA").

Also, the omission of an article ("...known as a [or: the] sewer cover and manhole cover") indicates the the term is the name for that specific sewer cover and manhole cover and thus a proper noun so it should be "Sewer Cover And Manhole Covers". But that frankly sounds like the name of a rap duo, so now we have ASCAP involved, and before long we'll end up in court, and then probably eventually hiding out in a cave in Montana from bailiffs. So, in summary: no. Herostratus (talk) 23:05, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Herostratus: Thanks for the heads-up. Now fixed. Greg L (talk) 14:25, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Manhole cover in space?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2018_September_26#Manhole_cover_in_space?

--Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 00:24, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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