This is super cool. The Blue Angels are performing at an airshow this weekend in New Hampshire. Well, for the last couple of days they have been practicing right over my office. I don’t mean “near” my office – I work a third of a mile from the airstrip – they are directly overhead! I sat in the parking lot for a while and watched them doing all those signature stunts and crazy formations.
Here are some shots (click to enlarge):
It’s Tuesday, and it’s like a million degrees out. All I wanted was something cold from the vending machine. I don’t ask much.
I walk out of my office and down the hall to the building’s community vending machines. I look at the selection of fluids and decide that some sort of cold energy drink would be totally sweet right now. So I reach into my wallet, take out my funds, deposit them into the machine… and click E9.
After a second or so, two of the little gates holding the bottles back clicked open and spew two cans of “Full Throttle” energy drink on to the little conveyor belt that carries the purchase to the shoot. I was like “whoa… jackpot!” and watched them drop into the opening that delivers the purchase to me.
Then, thinking that this must be some sort of special or something, I put in some more money and clicked the same set of buttons. To my surprise, it did it again. Two cans of energy drink fell down on to the conveyor belt and began to be delivered to me. But, there was a big problem this time. One of the previous cans had become lodged between the exit slot and one of the channels holding more drinks. As the little belt driven shelf came up, it ripped the can open and covered the inside of the machine with energy drink.
What’s up today? Well, it started with some mega-thunderstorms that rolled through and dropped a beat-down on Portsmouth. Now it’s just hot and muggy.
I got a completely kick-ass neon Guinness sign for my house yesterday. Two of my office mates went over to help clean out the old building and claimed it for me. So, huge props to Mel and Bryan – I’m extremely pumped. It needs a new bulb, but who cares. To a big Guinness fan like myself, this thing is completely kick ass!
I saw the President today! He traveled to Portsmouth to do some sort of meeting at a local high school and landed at the Pease International Trade Port. I work on the trade port, and went down the road to see if I could catch a look at the motorcade as it went by. Well, not two minutes after parking and walking over to the side of the road it came by. How cool is that!? I saw the big Presidential limo and the big motorcade of SUVs and police cruisers drive by. It was sort of surreal. Not ten feet from me was the President of the United States. I felt, and still feel all patriotic.
I’m not bubbling with excitement to be back in the office today. I feel like the past five weekends have been so busy that I never really had much time to chill. So, being monday (again), I’m feeling a little bit like I’m done with this week already.
Well, what can one do to improve one’s attitude at work? That’s simple… make ice cream sandwiches! I just ran out and grabbed a gallon of Cookie Dough ice cream and bag of chocolate Chip Cookies and announced it was “make your own ice cream sandwich day”. There was a veritable stampede. Good stuff.
Now, two sandwiches and a bowl of ice cream later, I feel like it may actually turn out to be “get sick in the bathroom after a major sugar rush” day. Yikes. I can feel my heart pounding and I feel like cornholio from Beavis and Butthead. I could push the limit and get a NOS energy drink from the vending machine, but I’m not certain I’d survive.
Speaking of NOS, we (Jamie G and I) made what could arguably be the worlds first Office NOS can wind chime. The design is a little cheesy, and is basically an empty NOS can taped to a desk, but it’s a wind chime to us. Now all we need is a little breeze in here to make it chime (bang against the desk).
What the hell is wrong with us?
Ok couple things today…
First off – {insert name here}, stay out of my way. You are nothing but drunk white trash. We know, the police know, my lawyer knows, and you need to tread extremely lightly around me. You can’t win this, so don’t try or you will just look more stupid than you do already.
Second, I’m crazy nervous about this weekend’s baby shower at the house. I’m at least 80% sure I will be calling the police on the neighbor. In fact, I’m almost looking forward to it. Assuming things don’t go that way (and I’m sure they will), we have two days left to get everything together so the day goes well. The house is cleaning up, the back yard is all cleaned up, the fence is up and we are both doing everything we can to ensure everything is in place. 50 people in my house is going to be ludicrous.
But, the party is at most three hours baby! I need only last three hours. Then it will all be behind me. Ok, to be honest I’m sure it will go fine. I’m just overwhelmed with things that need to still be done. I’m usually pretty busy anyway with work, band, freelance and whatnot. Add this sort of thing into the mix and life tends to get a little crazy.
Dump this in the “it can’t hurt to ask” category…
I work in a fairly modern, laid back, technology-based based company. We are about 60 employees, most of which are technical staff (web dev, apps, creative, IT, etc..). Therefore, it’s not unnatural to assume that some of us (if not most) are gamers to some degree.
Well we just moved offices, as I’ve mentioned before, and seem to be launching new efforts to promote internal collaboration and inter-office communication. Well, I sent this long-winded email to our CEO asking if we can set up a network game to play after hours. I reasoned it would create some more energy in the office and help build relationships between teams.
I didn’t expect approval, we are pretty anal about what we do with the machines/software in the office. Well, turns out it can’t hurt to ask – he said go for it, just keep it on the low-down.
Ok… I reckon I’ve had this blog thing for ages, yet never really consistently used it. When I do use it, it seems like I have to really think about every post I make and make sure it has some value to anyone that happens to be reading it. But, in reality, a blog is just a “web log” and doesn’t really need every post to be intricate, thought provoking and drawn out. So, to that end I’m going to see how long I can go posting at least “something” everyday.
Today..
My company just moved offices, and today is the first day in the new location. We’re not big (60 employees or so) but this office feels a little more cramped than the last. I’m still building an opinion on whether or not I like it, but one hugely influential factor is that now we are in walking distance to my favorite lunch joint (Paddy’s). I felt I had to celebrate the move today, or more accurately the new close proximity to Paddy’s and walk over for some chicken tenders and a Summer Ale on the deck. I swear, working in an office lit by overhead lights is tough – but sitting in the sun with wings and a pint, then coming back to said office is a lot tougher. I want to take the rest of the day off and head home to sit on my deck.
