Just thought of this as an interesting add-on to the above. A friend of mine has a company that installs holiday decorations, mostly for large businesses. Thi

Just thought of this as an interesting add-on to the above. A friend of mine has a company that installs holiday decorations, mostly for large businesses. Think everything from CNN to Disneyland. The other day he was telling me that for years doing any fabrication work on site has had so much red tape that it is incredibly expensive in time and money. If, for example, they have an aluminum rod that needs to be cut a little shorter, they are REQUIRED to get the Fire Department, Fire Marshall, Security and other groups involved. I asked what the theory might be. He said sparks and fire. To which I replied: "Aluminum doesn't spark, even steel won't spark unless you are using a grinder. Even at that, the sparks have virtually no energy and only fly a few inches." It doesn't matter, he said, that's the rules and we have to abide by them or we can't do business. He explained that one of the consequences of this is that the cost of some of these projects is massive. They have to do a ton more planning and work in order to avoid any fabrication work on site. Even worse, because you can't plan everything perfectly, any fabrication requires taking things down, bringing them to the shop and then back to the site. It ends-up being cheaper than getting a small army involved to make a small cut on a a 1/4 inch piece of aluminum rod. This is a drop in the ocean when compared to totality of the California "experience" if you are in business here.