Men’s Locker Room

Christmas Morning

Working on Christmas

It is kind of nice to work on Christmas.

Everything is a lot more calm and laid back. Only the essential people are there, and there were a lot less distractions. This morning, the freeways were very sparsely occupied. Tim Horton’s was closed, so I didn’t get my early morning coffee and donut fix. (it’s good to give your islet cells and your insulin receptors a break every now and then.) I was able to find a parking spot with no hassle. The staff were all generally in a good mood. Things went very smoothly. They were even giving away free lunch in the cafeteria to hospital employees.

The whole process was distilled down to the main objective, taking care of people.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this was how things normally worked? The multiple layers of bureaucracy serve only to weigh things down and cause unneeded stress. The competition and trying to prove yourself cause unneeded stress. All of the meetings and paperwork cause unneeded stress. Why do we insist on making things more complicated than they actually are?

The downside of working on the holiday was being away from my family. While I covered for my colleagues, they were relaxing at home and enjoying their families. I need to make sure that I take some time to do this as well.

Flood

Today there was a flood in the building that I work in. Apparently, a fire hose broke on the second floor. I work on the third floor, and was not directly affected. It was really interesting to see places and rooms that I know and have worked in for 13 years with two inches of water on the floor. And of course, the water soaked through the ceiling and into the lobby and offices on the first floor creating a fine mess.

No one was hurt. Everything will be cleaned up. None of my stuff got wet. I offered help, but legions of maintenance workers from the four corners of the campus descended on our building.

This all allowed me the opportunity to be a casual observer of these events.

First of all, the water had a stale odor. I assume that the water in the fire hose lines are the same as the water fountains and sinks. Maybe this was due to the massive quantity of water with a higher net cumulative amount impurities for my nose to detect. I’m sure that over the next few days and weeks, the smell will only get worse.

It was also interesting to stand next to the elevators and hear the gushing of water down the elevator shaft. I wish I could have opened the doors to see it running. There was also the loud hum of the vacuums being used to suck up the water.

There were tons of people gathered around. Several maintenance workers were vacuuming, while several supervisors talked on their cell phones. There were also hordes of security officers staked out to keep out anyone who was not supposed to be there. (being somewhere where other people are not allowed to be always makes you feel special!)

There were stacks of soaked through towels and blankets thrown into strategic positions to act as makeshift dams. Some places this worked, some it didn’t. In one of the first floor office areas, the ceiling collapsed, and there were scattered bits of wet ceiling tiles and debris littering the floor. All of the offices had plastic hastily thrown over desks and computers.

The coolest part had to be the stairwell waterfall. Water was trickling down in an oddly out of context peaceful way. I wish that I had  video camera to film this. It made me think of the movie Titanic.

I’m sure there will be lots of damage caused by this incident, and there will be a lot of hard work to clean it up. I’m not making light of any of this. It’s nice to be able to revel in the nuances and details of some thing out of the ordinary. As I watched, I felt a sense of truly living in the moment.

Shadows

So there is a down side to e-books

I have loved my Amazon Kindle since receiving it on my birthday last summer.

It is so nice to have the things that I’m reading very easily accessible and in one place. I also like to think that I am being environmentally friendly by not cluttering up my house with books. The best feature however is the Wispernet. This is like a cell phone network that allows you to browse and purchase books from Amazon without hooking into a computer or finding wi-fi. It is very easy to use.

But…

Last night i settled into to my comfy chair and started to read the book Death From the Skies (see my previous post “We Are Made of Star Stuff“) All of the sudden, I got an error screen. I found that I was also unable to open any of my other books. Grrrr!!

I called the Amazon Kindle support line, and they were extremely helpful. Because of the wispernet, he was able to troubleshoot from his end. After all was said and done, we discovered that the Death From the Skies book had corrupted data that in turn corrupted all of my other books. The solution was to reset the Kindle and re-download all of my books. This process was very easy also, but I was not able to re-download the book that I was reading. Grrrr!!

Now one thing that I can say about the paper and glue variety of book is that I have never had one crash and erase all of my other books. It also makes me realize that our world is becoming more virtual. Consider that if for some reason, natural or otherwise, our power grid goes down, then I will not have access to my kindle library.

Note to self: if you want to own a copy of a book on how to survive the apocalypse, don’t buy it with your kindle. Get a hard copy!

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Emergency

We are made of star stuff

Photo by Image Editor, a Flickr.com user

I’m reading the book Death From the Skies by Phil Plait. This is a book written by an astronomer outlining all of the ways that the Earth can be destroyed by astronomical events. To me, this book is a fun vehicle to learn about astronomy. Phil Plait writes with the boyish enthusiasm of a b movie sci-fi geek. You can almost hear him beaming and making SPLOOOSCH! explosion sounds!

That being said, a bit of perspective that I obtained from the book is that all of the elements that occur in nature were formed in explosions of ancient dying stars. As Carl Sagan said “we are made of star stuff.”

Our solar system was formed from a disk of space debris that converged to form the sun, planets, asteroids etc. The part that blows my mind is that every atom and molecule that I consist of was part of that disk. I was formed out of the same stuff that formed the Earth. So were you. So was this computer. So was the Empire State building. So was that big Jesus statue on a hill over-looking Rio de Janeiro. Everything!

We are all made out of the same stuff. I bet that if everyone were taught this, and understood it, we would not be so focused on our differences.

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Computer Parts

Photo by D a r i n k a* a Flickr.com user

Here’s a story that I heard from someone at work that she swears is true.

There was a man who lived in an apartment building who needed to go out of town for his work. He had a pet dog, and his elderly neighbor would watch it while he was away.

One day when the neighbor went to check the dog, she was horrified to find that it had died.

She was not sure what to do, so she called her friend down the street. The friend said that she wasn’t sure what to do either, but if she took the body to the vets office, they would know how to dispose of it.

She hung up the phone, and looked around for a way to carry the dog. An old suitcase that she found in the closet seemed to be the answer. She put the dog in, and struggled to carry it to the bus stop (she didn’t have a car.) As she approached the bus stop, a young man saw her struggling and asked what she had in the suitcase. She quickly replied, “computer parts.”

When the bus came, the young man offered to lift the suitcase onto the bus for her as they both got on. At the next stop, the young man ran down the aisle, grabbed the suitcase and bolted off the bus and down the street.

She chuckled to herself, and never saw him again.

New MacBook

So I got a new laptop today, an Apple MacBook. Our other older iBook was broken this summer when my daughter yanked out the power cord. After Hemming and Hawing about getting it fixed vs buying new, we went with the latter.

The computer is great, but I felt like I might have made a mistake in purchasing MobileMe. After my initial fussing, I can only get it to work in my iPhone. I was lured by the 30% off when you buy a new computer and made an impulse buy.