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I started the actual job I was trying to avoid and found it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.  It consisted of taking acetate and vellum engineering drawings, putting them through a giant scanner, organizing the files, and then boxing the drawings for storage at Iron Mountain for eternity.  I was able to convince my boss to let me have a single earphone in and I went through the day jollily listening to a family of TWiT podcasts.  The real fun part was the response I got from the CAD group that creates the 3D designs for new products.  I was in a different world:

-A drawing was rejected for not including the warning ‘remove all sharp edges and burrs’.   The drawing was for a circular piece of foam cushion that had both no edges and could not physically have burrs.

-There was a constant whoosh from an air vent that sounded like you were in a wind tunnel.  I wasn’t much affected as I had headphones on.  One CAD guy said it sounded like it was playing a tune a throughout the day whistled arguably the world’s least connected set of tunes, none of which had any sound bearing close to the air whoosh.

-One of the CAD guys was planning a rebellion for not being allowed to have a radio claiming that the place sounded “like a fucking church”.  Case and point: He rebooted his computer and the Windows boot music was shushed by his coworkers.

-Some of the drawings were pretty old.  In fact, I think I saw a CAD drawing for a horseless carriage and the wheel.

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I started the actual job I was trying to avoid and found it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.  It consisted of taking acetate and vellum engineering drawings, putting them through a giant scanner, organizing the files, and then boxing the drawings for storage at Iron Mountain for eternity.  I was able to convince my boss to let me have a single earphone in and I went through the day jollily listening to a family of TWiT podcasts.  The real fun part was the response I got from the CAD group that creates the 3D designs for new products.  I was in a different world:

-A drawing was rejected for not including the warning ‘remove all sharp edges and burrs’.   The drawing was for a circular piece of foam cushion that had both no edges and could not physically have burrs.

-There was a constant whoosh from an air vent that sounded like you were in a wind tunnel.  I wasn’t much affected as I had headphones on.  One CAD guy said it sounded like it was playing a tune a throughout the day whistled arguably the world’s least connected set of tunes, none of which had any sound bearing close to the air whoosh.

-One of the CAD guys was planning a rebellion for not being allowed to have a radio claiming that the place sounded “like a fucking church”.  Case and point: He rebooted his computer and the Windows boot music was shushed by his coworkers.

-Some of the drawings were pretty old.  In fact, I think I saw a CAD drawing for a horseless carriage and the wheel.

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7:00 AM – no one in, edit wikipedia entries for improper use of the word ‘momentarily’
8:00 AM – 1 person in, edit wikipedia when she’s not in the office
9:00 AM – everyone in, stare at inbox
10:00 AM – Told tech support would come to fix computer, fear struck into heart.
11:00 AM – While waiting for tech support, eat 1/4 of a birthday cake left in hallway
12:00 PM – Bacon!!!
1:00 PM – while waiting at PC for tech support, I realize that my drink is next to a very expensive computer and that I should move it before I accidentally knock it open.
1:23 PM (I checked) – Awake suddenly from nap because I realized I was falling asleep and didn’t move drink.  In process of waking, flail wildly searching for drink to move causing drink to spray over desk.  And god do I mean spray… Run to bathroom to get paper towels, realize paper towels only come off one at a time, rip paper towel dispenser off the wall and run past housekeeping holding paper towel dispenser.

Wow, I made a mess, things I had to remove Diet Cherry Coke from:
Phone
Phone cord
Phone receiver (there was a little pool in there)
Right speaker
Speaker Power supply
Keyboard (I actually drained it out)
Between buttons of wireless mouse
CAD navigation device
Around desklamp

Interestingly, after the soda largely soaked into the carpet it started seeping under the clear plastic floor mat.  The soda started to evaporate making little coke-colored clouds and rain drops.  Amazingly, I was able to clean all of this with only the housekeeper seeing.  He was glad I cleaned my own workstation but wanted the paper towel dispenser back.

On the plus side, I was quite awake after that micronap.

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7:00 AM – no one in, edit wikipedia entries for improper use of the word ‘momentarily’
8:00 AM – 1 person in, edit wikipedia when she’s not in the office
9:00 AM – everyone in, stare at inbox
10:00 AM – Told tech support would come to fix computer, fear struck into heart.
11:00 AM – While waiting for tech support, eat 1/4 of a birthday cake left in hallway
12:00 PM – Bacon!!!
1:00 PM – while waiting at PC for tech support, I realize that my drink is next to a very expensive computer and that I should move it before I accidentally knock it open.
1:23 PM (I checked) – Awake suddenly from nap because I realized I was falling asleep and didn’t move drink.  In process of waking, flail wildly searching for drink to move causing drink to spray over desk.  And god do I mean spray… Run to bathroom to get paper towels, realize paper towels only come off one at a time, rip paper towel dispenser off the wall and run past housekeeping holding paper towel dispenser.

Wow, I made a mess, things I had to remove Diet Cherry Coke from:
Phone
Phone cord
Phone receiver (there was a little pool in there)
Right speaker
Speaker Power supply
Keyboard (I actually drained it out)
Between buttons of wireless mouse
CAD navigation device
Around desklamp

Interestingly, after the soda largely soaked into the carpet it started seeping under the clear plastic floor mat.  The soda started to evaporate making little coke-colored clouds and rain drops.  Amazingly, I was able to clean all of this with only the housekeeper seeing.  He was glad I cleaned my own workstation but wanted the paper towel dispenser back.

On the plus side, I was quite awake after that micronap.

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Behold my work’s site bans:
xkcd.com, blocked

pennyarcade.com, allowed

xkcd.com consists of crudely drawn (usually) figures making math jokes whereas Penny Arcade features a character named Fruit Fucker 2000 and an alcoholic DivX player. A year ago, there was a story arc involving the main character removing his genitals so they could rubbed against a 103-inch television.  I can see why they made the decision they did.

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I had nothing to do today.  Even less than yesterday’s nothing.  Then Chris Fosmire told me that I’d have to scan in some 1000 large mechanical drawings and that I should hold tight until they figure out how to get Adobe Acrobat to load on the machine. Ha ha, score.
9:00 AM – Not loaded
10:00 AM – Not loaded
11:00 AM – Not loaded
12:00 PM – Lunch
1:00 PM – Bacon nap
2:00 PM – Not loaded
3:00 PM – Loaded, computer crashes
4:00 PM – (OS) Not loaded
GOAL!!!!

I doubt it’ll hold through Wednesday, but if it does, I might feel a little worse about skipping church

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Chris:  Terry, you look a little woozy.
Me: I think the bacon’s getting to me.

–30 minutes later–

Chris:  You look a lot better, what’d you do?
Me: Bacon nap.

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I ran out of work today.  Normally, when I run out of work I start poking around looking for things to clean before I’m given some Sisyphean task like scanning our back catalog and then deleting the files.  I asked around, no one had anything.  I waited, I asked around, no one had anything.  Someone had something, I did it in 5 minutes and that was after stretching it out.  It got to the point where Chris Fosmire was essentially having conversations through me requesting status updates.  I’d walk to someone’s lab, ask them how they were doing, they’d start explaining, stop and just call Chris creating a net increase in the amount of work.  At around 1 PM I had enough and walked into Chris’ office.
Me: Chris *obvious stalling cough* I need to leave and *his eyes perk up* visit the store for…
Chris: *Emphatic that I’d be leaving* Okay, that’s fine, have a nice day.
Me: But I didn’t even tell you where I’m going.
Chris: I’m sure I can figure it out.
Me: But…. okay.

I hope it keeps up tomorrow so I can go to the pants store.

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One of my Indian coworkers was planning a surprise party for a friend who’s graduating from college and was having trouble finding a track whose main theme was congratulations.  She found a track by Juliana Theory that would have been wildly inappropriate (read: hilarious if used).  This irony occurred again with The Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, and Blue October when she finally stumbled upon one that seemed to do by some group I can’t recall.  I asked her if she thought the DJs would have the track to which she replied “they’re DJs, if they don’t have it, they just sing it”.