mad scientist gets wet

my son likes to do science. 

He has made liquid oxygen, potato cannons, various ingots, and a bunch of other stuff.

After the end of school he and a friend were doing some science and decided it would be better in the dark so the garage door went down, the lights went off and.................well I guess it got a wee bit hot because he set off one of the sprinklers.  ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The sprinkler system we have is a bit old, and will trigger at 125 degrees which actually isn't very hot.  And being an older system it sprays glycol not water which is a nasty, hard to clean substance.  Also no one has ever shown me where the turn off is for the fire suppression system so we had about 20-30 min of full on glycol spray in garage.  Yuck.   And expensive.

I am also looking at buying a business, and as I tried to keep the glycol flowing down the floor drains I found myself thinking ---WTF do all homes in Aspen have to have fire suppression systems.  If yes, this could be interesting because not only do you get paid to install them you get paid to service them and I love recurring revenue.

A quick call to some of my architect and builder friends confirmed that yes most homes in the area require fire suppression systems, so maybe my son has found a business for me.

But the other part of my brain---the one that is filling out ooooodles of paperwork so he can work as a sailing instructor this summer  while under the age of 18 is thinking WTF---have we jumped the shark on rules.  Between the sprinklers doing a ton more damage than a fire most likely ever could (my insurance buddies confirmed this to be true), and my kid needed to prove he is a citizen with 3 types of IDs, getting 'working papers' which includes his full doctor's report, and a sign off from the local school superintendent and 6 more forms, I wonder if we maybe have jumped the shark.  I have heard the road to hell is paved with good intentions-- and when I hear of a couple of employers who won't hire anyone under 18 because the paperwork is too onerous, and when people complain about the cost of real estate in Aspen I wonder if a few less rules might lower real estate costs (or increase youth employment) without any collateral damage (except maybe to the income of businesses created to deal with these silly rules).

PS maybe I should run for President:

I promise to cut red tape
not take oppo research from anyone (foreign or domestic)
only hire people who are smarter than me (which actually isn't a very high bar)
and never ever tweet