I contemplated a snarky response to that, like 'I'm waiting for the tunnel-boring machine to induce an earthquake-like shaking under the Bellagio and an EMP source to knock out the power before I grab the chips' - butt I thought better of that idea.
I did so because your post reminded me of a mental game that my best friend and I used to play while working in the lab late, late at night. The game went something like this:
There was a hill we knew that had a road running straight up the hill, no switchback just straight up the grade and it was sufficiently steep that riding a bike up that hill even in the lowest gear was a chore.
So we interrogated our greed versus logic/risk-taking ratio by constructing hypotheticals, often involving gold, that related to that hill.
We would ask ourselves this: assume you have only one chance to move a solid gold sphere or a solid gold equilateral tetrahedron up that hill from the bottom to the top using only your own strength (and maybe a foot to act as a holding wedge on the gold sphere whilst you rest) to push the sphere or tetrahedron up that hill using only the road as a route, no fair going off the road to rest the gold object in soft soil or grass while you rest. And you only have X period of time to do it. Of course to some degree, the more time you had, the bigger you might think you could handle the gold object given more rest time.
While 'spearmints ran, we'd use our calculators and green quadrille engineering pads to do the math based on the density of gold, the dimensions of the gold object, and our own estimates os what we knew (or believed) we could move and control (the tetrahedron, requiring a 'flop-flop-flop' movement was hardest to estimate both our ability to flop it each move and how long it would require t make it up the hill. Dense tetrahedrons are remarkably stable with so much weight at the bottom and a very low center of gravity - tough to flop.
For the gold sphere, the main prollem we saw was how to keep it from rolling back down if you lost control and how big of a sphere could your foot hold in place using your foot as a chock or wedge without getting it rolled over by the gold sphere, crushing you foot and rolling all the way back down the hill.
Basically, we were evaluating how much risk we were willing to accept based on mostly wild-assed estimates and no empirical data or testing versus our greed based on the value of the gold object in troy ounces at the then-current spot price for bullion.
We also had variants where you had to carry the sphere or tetrahedron up the hill without allowing it to touch the ground. This we could better estimate based on our experience with free weights and knowing our general capabilities and limits. But still it was at best a wild-assed guestimate. And it varied whether you had to hold the object in your arm(s) or if you could rig it on a backpack frame to disperse the load and bear a lot of it on your hips with the frame belt and the rest on your shoulder straps.
These are some of the ways you fill time while 'spearmints are running. This and lab baseball, hall hockey, and a number of other diversions.
And of course with a cup of coffee always within reach - even when mouth-pipetting radioisotope-labelled compounds behind a Lexan or lead (or lead-glass) shield. Just use a styrofoam cup so you can throw it in the rad waste after your gloved hands pick it up so you can drink from it in between mouth-pipetting of the radioisotope (usually from 1 milliCurie vials taken ~OUTT of their lead shipping/storage over-containers - a non-trivial amount of radioactive compound). I routinely used 5-10 milliCuries in a week on some 'spearmints. That's the most the lab could order in a week - 10 milliCuries of certain isotopes, otherwise you had to fill ~OUTT a special form, justify your intended use and amount, walk that form to 4 different offices all around campus for signatures, and then be closely monitored by the campus radiation office - a real buzzkill. Then you had to report a log of each use and amount and the disposal of same. Pain in the ass. So I kept it to 10 milliCuries/week tops.
These are the benefits of working late at night with nobody to oversee you except the janitorial staff and wax crew who have no idea what you're doing and whom you've co-opted anyway.
Nowadays, these places all have wall-to-wall video coverage 24/7 and recording so all the fun is ruined. Like the Wagon Wheel, those days are just memories now - and that's sad. Awfully glad I gott to see the frontier before all the risk-averse bureaucrats fenced all the fun ~OUTT and put in place unduly restrictive policies and procedures.
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