Special Events

Procure Inc to Launch Lunar Delivery Service

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“The Moon is where I see the real future of industrial and home comfort products.” Procure Inc, Lead Salseman Scott Today, Procure Inc is taking the next step forward in delivering a truly remarkable experience to our customers. We have finalized designs for a warehouse on the moon. This is the next logical step for us. NASA has plans to build a moon base, we see the private sector following them, the realestate up there is incredibly cheap at this time, and we believe space based operations will cut our delivery times in half with rocket-based delivery. Rockets can reach thousands of miles per second in the depths of space, sufficient to leave airplanes in the dust. “We dare to go to the moon, it’s just the best move for us.” Procure Inc, Spokesman Critics of the move have pointed to the extreme cold temperatures experienced on the moon, to which we say: “sounds like free cooling for our warehouse if you ask me. What’s wrong with an environmentally sustainable cooling system?” There are a number of unknowns at this point. We’re not sure what the crime rates are going to be like in our new neighborhood. Our analysts have been concerned about the speed of internet access and whether the next season of the Expanse will be available on the moon. The only major concern however, company-wide, has been convincing Scott not to name his moon-jeep Enterprise, given that […]

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Special Events

History of Groundhog Day

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Groundhog day is a bit of a big deal in Pennsylvania, we all gather around to see if Punxsutawney Phil will come out or see his shadow. If his shadow scares him back underground, then winter will be longer. If he stays outside, then Spring is right around the corner. The tradition dates back several centuries if we look for its oldest roots. Evolving Holidays The oldest holiday like Groundhogs Day is the Celtic Imbolc, a celebration of the beginning of Spring. This was traditionally held on February second, what we now call Groundhog’s Day. Christianity eventually turned Imbolc into Candlemas, a holiday revolving around Jesus in Jeruselam. Candlemas brought about the first predications for when Spring would arrive. In some parts of Europe, Christians believed that a clear day on Candlemas meant another forty days of snow and cold weather. A cloudy or otherwise inclement day would mean Spring arriving early. This is starting to sound a lot like Groundhog Day, isn’t it? The Germans would give the holiday the final major evolutionary step: if a small animal emerging from its den is scared back inside, winter will be longer, and if not it will be shorter. Their animal of choice for the holiday was a Badger. Moving to the States Pennsylvania has a massive German Heritage, often called PA Dutch (a mispronunciation of Deutsche by the English speakers of the 1700s). On top of having strong influences of […]

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Special Events

The Christmas Train

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It’s the week before Christmas and most of us in the office didn’t check-in this morning. Our brains are alive with visions of trees, turkeys, and our new toys waiting under the tree. I’m personally trying not to burst into song and dance across the office, singing about Hot-Hot Hot Chocolate, never ever let it cool, hot-hot, yea we got it… Lead Salesman Scott’s giving me the look.. Right… Back to topic. The history of Trains and Christmas! Trains and What? For those of you who have never heard of this, it is fairly common in the United States to have a model train under your Christmas Tree. The famous model train maker Lionel even sells a polar express set designed to go around the tree. This is a tradition that dates back almost to the first steam trains. In some ways, it goes back even farther. From Steam to Electricity Steam engines were a massive symbol of travel, commerce, and industry in the late 1800s. Every Christmas, you didn’t fly home, you took the train. If you shipped something long distance, it took the train. If you were waiting for word from distant family, you probably went to the train station for a telegram. It was a massive, unavoidable part of life. Toy trains would have been common in those days, everything from carved and painted wooden train sets to heavy, drop-this-and-lose-your-foot cast iron trains with wind up motors. […]

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Special Events

Why is Football a Thanksgiving Tradition?

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It’s time for another look at Holiday History! Thanksgiving is tomorrow and as it’s Thanksgiving Eve, it’s the perfect excuse to talk about history instead of the hydronics Sales Guy Scott thought I was writing about. In the US, there is a tradition of watching or in some cases playing football on Thanksgiving. The question on our minds today: why!? It’s Turkey Day, who wants to get a concussion and get stuck with hospital turkey? The Origins of a Tradition Football as we know it today basically came about in the mid 1800s (technically, it’s roots go farther back, but that’s a topic for another day). This lines up pretty well with the start of Thanksgiving as a federal holiday in the 1860s. The new holiday gave nearly everyone a day off. Various football teams took advantage of the day off and began to organize annual games on Thanksgiving. As near as we can tell, the first such game was in 1876, held by Princeton and Yale. Other teams would pick up on the idea at all levels. Some high schools end their football season with a Thanksgiving day game still today. Professional leagues would soon pick up on the idea, with Thanksgiving day games held in the early football leagues in the 1890s. The Big League’s Holiday Essentially from that time forward, there have been Thanksgiving football games. It’s a core part of the sport’s DNA. In 1939,  President […]

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Happy Halloween!

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Happy Halloween! It’s time to dress up as a zombie HVAC Contractor and go haunt the mechanical rooms of the world! I heard that lead Sales Guy Scott’s dressing up as Dracula’s sale’s guy (someone has to sell those vampire books). We’re going to take today to look at a crucial part of Halloween culture: the history of the horror movie. The First Fright Nailing down the first ever horror movie is a challenge. Few films survive from the earliest days of movies. We can only really call a particular movie the first with a tremendous grain of salt. A grain of salt the size of an entire mine. We’re peering across cultures and time. It’s possible that other horror movies predated this or you could argue this isn’t horror.The French movie Le Manoir du diable, released as The Haunted Castle and The Devil’s Castle in English speaking countries, is generally considered the first horror movie. The Devil’s Castle was created by Georges Melies, one of the grandfathers of visual effects. He worked on movies before green screens and before color. The movie runs at just 3 minutes, but that was considered long when it came out in 1896. It focuses on the Devil essentially haunting a castle, with skeletons, bats, and other things appearing and disappearing. It’s not even scary (but it IS out of copyright, so enjoy). Bigger Productions The 1910s and 20s brought along Hollywood and the […]

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Hurricane Recovery

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You’ve been through the major stages of the Hurricane: Prepare Survive ? Now it’s time for the last part. Recovery. This is going to be different for everyone. In some places, you’ll just have a contractor working on your roof. Maybe you’re coming home to nothing but a cement pad. If you’re lucky, you just need to fix up what you have.   Major Repairs The first step in the process is assessing the damage of what’s there. You’ll likely need a housing inspector to walk through your house and find anything damaged or compromised. There could be structural damage. Many of you will need significant roof repair. For flood damage, you’ll need to work on treating mold, replacing electrical wires, and replacing everything that came into contact with the water. If any part of your HVAC system was submerged, it’s probably toast. We’re going to focus on the parts of the repair process that we know best: HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical. As we said above, there’s a good chance your HVAC System is pretty much gone. Ground mounted condenser assemblies may have been exposed to flooding. You’ll need to have them inspected for damage inside. Some designs are highly resistant to rain, but flooding will cause electrical shorts that leads to equipment failure. The water itself and any possible contaminants it picked up such as salt can corrode fittings and motors. Your compressor might actually survive, it’s mostly a […]

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Special Events

Don’t Underestimate a Hurricane

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Today’s blog post is once more, early for the pending hurricane in the Carolinas. We will return to your regularly scheduled blogging later next week. Hurricane Florence has weakened to a category 2 storm, but it is no less deadly. It might be worse than if it had remained a category 4 and kept moving.   The Category System There are a lot of factors that go into how strong a storm is. We don’t have an easy system to boil this down to a master deadliness rating. There’s the amount of rain, the storm surge, the wind, the size of it, how long it’s going to impact a given area, and more. If we had a complex system that factored in everything, the average person wouldn’t be able to understand the taxonomy and understand the storm. As a result, we build our hurricane categories on one factor alone: windspeed. We start out with tropical depressions and tropical storms, then work our way up to faster and faster winds, all the way up to roaring 150mph+ category 5 storms. The wind is a predictable, understandable factor. We know the faster the wind gets, the more damage there will be. In some ways, the wind speed is a measure of how much energy is in a storm. This is an understandable set up. You see Category 5 and you know the storm is gonna be a whipping bulldozer that levels everything […]

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How to Prepare for a Hurricane

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This week’s blog post is coming out early. We at Procure Inc feel that knowledge can save lives and in times of emergency, the least we can do is spread useful knowledge to anyone in need. Everyone in the path of Hurricane Florence, stay safe and good luck.   How Bad Is The Hurricane? The first thing to know about surviving a hurricane is to know what a hurricane is and just how bad things will get. In a sense, you can think of the hurricane as a tornado about the size of Texas. There will be extreme wind, rain, and flooding. The air is going to move so fast that it will literally rip the roofs off homes. Tree branches, parts of houses, and anything not tied down is going to become airborne. If the wind doesn’t directly hurt you, the debris will, and if the debris doesn’t, significant portions of the state will be underwater. Hurricane Florence is expected to become a Category 5 hurricane. The steady wind speeds will exceed 160 miles per hour. If you had a small airplane, you probably would “hover” if you flew into the wind or even end up flying backwards. There is no stronger category of storm, though there has been consideration for a category 6 to be made. Storms of this size are basically flying bulldozers. Homes will be demolished or washed away. Electrical service will be wiped out. Trees […]

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The US Labor Movement

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It’s that time again, another Holiday and therefore another look at something cool and interesting outside our usual cooling comfort zone. We previously covered the origins of labor day, rather than repeat that, we’re going to explore the labor movement in the century since then!   Labor Movement? From some of the earliest days of the United States, there has been some form or other of labor movement to improve the conditions of workers. This covers everything from the push to a 40 hour work week to unions negotiating for benefits. Groups of workers, lobbyists, and whole organizations have pushed for better working conditions, laws, and benefits to the working person. During the 1800s, the labor movement was massive. At the time, there were few protections for workers of any kind. A person could be expected to work six days a week for however long the employer wanted in whatever conditions they created. It was common and expected to work for pennies a day, doing back-breaking work, in suffocating heat, while potentially being exposed to toxic substances like asbestos or being around machines that could rip your leg off. There was no workman’s compensation either, on the job injuries were only the worker’s fault for messing up. This movement was big enough that by the 1880s, there were ideas being discussed about a Labor Day. It would be a day to celebrate the workers of the country and the work […]

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History of the 4th of July

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It’s a big American holiday today and that calls for our usual special posts. Last year we covered the American Revolution, today we’ll cover one of the first holidays it created and why we might be celebrating on the wrong day.   A Quick Recap It’s the mid 1770s in the British Colonies and sentiment is turning towards independence. The colonists had no representation within the British government, were subjected to taxes they had no influence over, and no amount of peaceful protest, petition, or open conflict had changed anything. With more British troops pouring in to maintain order and enforce the laws, public opinion only deteriorated. On June 11th, 1776, the Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a statement justifying the separation of the colonies from British rule. They created a scathing document outlining every crime against the colonies as they saw it. This was everything from inhibiting them from creating their own laws to interfering with their ability to conduct trade to malicious acts against the colonists lives. On July 2nd, the Continental Congress formally decided on Independence. This was the vote that would start the colonists on a path to becoming a nation. John Adams believed July 2nd would be the day all would celebrate their independence. The Declaration of Independence was written already, but it would not be the formal response until Congress approved it on July 4th.   The First Celebrations There was an […]

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