When I'm in an elevator and when I reach my floor... the doors will open...
WHY OH WHY OH WHY.. am I sensing that certain people of certain ethnic decents... have this... compulsion.. to enter the elevator before you can get out?
That's why I'm asking if it's a cultural thing that I'm just aware of... or are these individuals just discourteous?
]]>Carol called me... from the stairwell of her building. They heard the tornado sirens going off outside, so they evacuated to the interior stairwells in the building core (sounds right, knowing how these buildings are built... keep away from glass, and the concrete core for the elevators, stairs, and God knows what gives GREAT protection if something happens). So what do we do? Get up and look at the window!
She called me a few minutes later saying they heard about funnel clouds being sighted in Elgin coming straight this way, through Hoffman Estates. Great. Don't like hearing about funnel clouds passing through the town where we live.
I told everybody in the cubes around me what was going on... where she was (not far away at all) and what they were doing.
And then the announcement over the building PA:
May I have your attention. May I have your attention please. This is a severe weather alert. All personnel should immediately move to the center core of the building, restrooms, stairwells, and inner core offices, away from all glass or mirrors until the all clear is announced.
...and then the alarm went off along with strobes.
Off we all went, first to the conference room suites in the center of our office space, with all the full length glass... Well, we were shagged out of there and told to wait in the stairwells...
... and you know.. when the staircase next to the elevators is just a step or two from the railing that overlooks the lobby with it's glass windows... it's just too hard to resist staying in the stairwell... you know, you could EASILY get into the stairwell if something would happen...
...so that's where I stood... with at least a dozen other people.. including others from meetings in the conference rooms, with their laptops and wireless connections, constantly checking radar and NWS reports...
The sky was turning black... you could see the underside of the clouds getting lower... but no rain, which made a bunch of people walk outside to see what they could see. Reports of funnel cloud sightings in Schaumburg, where I work, started to trickle in. It looked NASTY outside. The radar showed a really bad cell skipping through directly west-to-east with us in the way. Then it got dark, quiet...
...pretty soon the skies got lighter.. and lighter.. and then they just opened-up... a deluge. needless to say, nobody stayed outside.
After a few minutes of continued deluge, the internal alarm systems sounded the all clear and we went back to our cubes.
Hard to get motivated after that, though.
]]>Yes, marchFIRST.
Those were the days. So long ago...
I felt this year that I had to mark this day, because on February 2nd, Bob Bernard the CEO and founder of the original company - Whittman-Hart - died of a heart attack. He was 45.
Gtreat.
]]>This entry is a little different, but still is as vague as possible - don't want to get dooce'd.
I never feel helpless at work at all unless something happens to my ID Badge and I can't get in to the four doors to get to my desk from the parking garage. Four. To go to the bathroom, I need to go through one of those doors. I HATE having to ask someone to borrow their just to be able to go to the bathroom. There was a time at the end of March that my card didn't work for a week. A WHOLE FRIGGIN' WEEK without a card. That was hell. There was one night after most of the people had left when I had to go to the bathroom, and - I'm sure you agree - doing that takes precedence over trying to find someone still in the office that will let you borrow their card. I had to wait 15 minutes for someone to come to the door and let me in.
To add fuel to the fire, the card reader stations are mag-stripe readers and not proximity readers (for you non-dweebs out there, that means I have to take my card and swipe it through a reader, like a credit card, instead of just touching - or getting close to - a reader that'll read a certain radio frequency that gets bounced off the card) And there's at least one of these readers - specifically the one between bathroom and office - that doesn't read well, so it can take up to 5 or 6 swipes to get the reader to recognize the card and unlock the door.
Well, it started again this morning - I could get in some doors, but not the last two. After a while, I started to find out that this was happening to other people as well - all of us are contractors. I had nightmares of this. People are telling us that it could be the cards or could be the reader because the "system" shows that we are active.
After we demonstrated what was going on to another person, all of a sudden the cards work. We didn't see any work done on the reader, so it had to have been a "system" thing.
I hate the feeling of being locked-out. It's almost that feeling of not being wanted, that you're not part of the group. And this is happening often enough (my first incident was shortly after we moved-in here at the beginning of the year), that anytime the system "hiccups", I start to panic.
]]>You know. Yesterday.
March 1st.
Know where I used to work years ago? During the Great Internet Boom?
Yes, marchFIRST.
Those were the days. So long ago...
And immediately I was taken back to my childhood, when Paul and Albert would come to my house, stand in the gangway between the houses, and yell my name, just the same way. It was a kids-style doorbell, specifically for me. They'd alway come over before we walked over to Steinmetz to play ball on one of the diamonds (or even fast pitch against the stairs at the front of the school)
It was a wonderful, if not brief, trip back in time, to a time of warm sumer days, no school, and baseball for hours with your friends.
]]>Would rather be busy regularly than peaks and valleys of activity/inactivity.
]]>Have got this pain, in the middle of my stomach. Sharp, stabbing pain. Spent too much time in the bathroom last night.
No, not going to work. I don't want to suffer there - especially without a badge that won't let me in anywhere. I figure that would be a real bad thing. I could lay around and sleep and recharge for the week.
Hmmm.... this is pretty close to what it felt like back in September, though the pain overnight was pretty bad, it doesn't feel as bad in the daylight.
]]>Update: My new badge doesn't work. At all. It won't let me in any of the 4 doors I need - or even more importantly, it won't let me back in the ONE door that I need when I return from the restroom. There are no temporary badges either. Until they fix me, I'm a man without a badge - and that's not a good place to be.
]]>Very quiet.
Today, just to play with the season and since I already had the beard and gut, I wore a Santa hat to work. Nearly every single person addressed me as Santa today - and I don't know any of these people. But they were all smiling.
Even the hottest woman in the place, whom I've only seen once, stopped by my cube and wanted to know if she could add some last minute wishes to her list. Oh. My. God.
Gotta love the hat.
I have a cell phone dead spot right at my desk!
That's not good!!!!
I swear I was OK yesterday...
]]>