Author: Mark Alexander

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One of Those Days

Today started out—before I even left the house—with me putting my thumb through one of the flimsy styrofoam cups you get drinks in from Sonic. Iced tea all over the floor.

This forced me to stop at Starbucks on the way to work. First time I’ve been to this particular store, and I wasn’t impressed.  Line to the door and the baristas seemed unconcerned about getting people in and out in a hurry.

I arrived at work to discover that my Windows password was no longer working. I had just changed it a couple weeks ago, so it’s not like it expired, or (like a lot of the people that work here) that I’d forgotten it over the span of a 3 day weekend. It was no big deal; I went into the server room and logged into the admin workstation there as administrator and went to fire up AD “Users and Computers” so I could reset the password.  I clicked on the link and waited. And waited. And waited. Oh, it seems Flash decided to update at that very moment.  Waited some more. Machine locked up. Tried to shut down and restart. MMC wasn’t shutting down.  Fuck it.  I pulled the power cord.

Once it had rebooted, I logged in—again as administrator—and went to start up “Users and Computers.”

It absolutely refused.

All right, I thought.  I’ll try it from our data server.

AD Tools not installed.

SERIOUSLY?

Next stop, our old mail server.  I knew the tools were installed there.

ANOTHER machine that locked up when accessing the tools.

By this time I was cursing more than halfway under my breath.

I moved onto our Domain Controller—a twelve year old Dell Pentium 3 desktop with 512MB RAM. Ten minutes later I was finally logged in and able to reset my account.

Of course, just as I was getting ready to go back to my desk, one of the most annoying, clueless users in the entire company started pounding on the server room door. When I answered he said, “I can’t get into my computer. I need you to fix this NOW.”

Had he tried rebooting?  Of course not. That’s too HARD.

And that’s exactly what fixed his connectivity issue.

I work with fucking idiots.

And the day only went downhill from there.

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New Beginnings

We’re moved.

The only casualties as far as I can tell (everything isn’t yet totally unpacked) are two light bulbs and the tip of my right middle (mouse wheel!) finger when it received the equivalent of being caught in a car door. (Some IKEA furniture is quite heavy.)

The new place is fabulous. Both Ben and I look around and think, “Equity finally got it right.” The difference between this complex and the previous one we lived in is like day and night. There are none of the WTF?!? design quirks that riddled the old place, and it is evident that the architect actually put some thought into the design. Everything about our new place is high end (or in the parlance of Auntie Mame “really top drawer!” In fact, if you didn’t know better you’d think the place was a condo.

The kitchen is huge. We actually have unused cabinets and drawers. (I’m sure that won’t last, but for now it’s kind of neat to know we have space.)

For a change, the bathroom exhaust fans don’t sound like jets taking off, and they even have moisture sensors that automatically turn them on and off as needed. I’m impressed. The toilets are dual-flush (half or full tank), and the fit and finish of everything is light years beyond what we had at Colorado Pointe.

All the light bulbs in the apartment are CFLs—that the complex replaces if they burn out. (Probably not that big a deal since I have CFLs that I purchased back in 2005 that are still going strong.)

While we don’t have real hardwood floors (they’re vinyl), they look like wood, and it’s nice not to have nasty old apartment-grade carpet in the main living areas. The cobalt blue rug that Ben bought for the living room a year ago looks really good against them.

We had a stacked washer/dryer at the old place. Now we’re back to having regular separates that seem to do everything except fold the clothes when they’re done. No more multiple hour-long dry cycles for a single load of clothes!

And did I mention the second bedroom that has a walk-in closet that’s as big as the separate storage room we had at the old place? We finally have a proper home office/guest room. (Or will have as soon as we get rid of the piles of boxes stacked there.)

And no more fucking parking garage!

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I've Been There!

I found this online and immediately thought, “I’ve been there!”

And I so want to go back.  Maybe for next summer’s road trip…

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Smile and Nod

That’s my new mantra for work, since apparently I now have an attitude.

I’m going to use Heather McDonald as my inspiration. I love her. She has one of the best fake celebrity smiles in the business. Whenever I feel a “fuck you, you stupid, willfully ignorant cow” moment coming on, I’ll think of Heather on the red carpet…

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And Then the Tornadoes Came

At least in a dream last night.

Work, work, work. It’s always about work.

I was at the office, and one of those dark, ominous storms was moving in. “This is not good,” I thought as I kept glancing out the window. I looked up and saw the clouds swirling in a circular motion and saw the funnel forming.

Apparently others had too, because the office manager came over the intercom and instructed everyone to go downstairs to the inner hallways as we’d done a so many times before in drills. “Not without my laptop,” I thought as I grabbed it, shoved it in its case and then into my backpack, and joined the procession downstairs.

The twister came and went. Our building was spared any real damage, but the adjacent structure had windows blown out.

The all clear was given, and the next thing I know I was walking down the street towards a non-existent (in real life) cafe. The clouds were dissipating and the sun was peeking out. Everything was a mess. As I was walking, another band of dark clouds started to move in, and I hurried my pace. (Where my car was in all of this, I haven’t a clue. Maybe I took public transit to work that day.) I arrived at the cafe and stood transfixed in front of the television, watching reports of the devastation around Denver. I looked outside and saw the band of clouds heading northwest, where Ben was (at his old school). I took out my phone to warn him, and saw he’d been frantically texting me, trying to warn me of the approaching storms. I tied to text back but it wasn’t working.

Suddenly it was night. Nothing came of the second storm, so I left the cafe and started walking to the train station. The wind picked up and suddenly there was another twister in the distance. Buildings exploded as it touched them, causing fires to spiral up into the sky.

Somehow having managed to escape that, the next thing I remember was being in my car, with the sun brightly shining, driving west down Colfax Avenue, noting all the destruction that lined the street. I had finally made contact with Ben and he was all right. We were both heading back home to survey the damage. I worried about what shape our place would be in, but simultaneously thought, “Well, if we’ve lost everything we have insurance; we’ll start fresh in the new apartment.”

And that is when I woke up.

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One Of The Most Bizarre Houses…

…I ever designed.

It was literally a “dream” house, a residence that popped up in a dream sometime in 1999 and so obsessed me for the next few days that I had to commit it to paper (or at least bytes). In the dream it was built on the east side of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, facing downtown.

You entered at street level. Living, dining, and kitchen were all on this level:

On the upper floor was a guest room and sitting area open to the living/dining area below. Not very practical, I know, but it has the advantage of not letting guests get too comfortable:

Downstairs was the master bedroom that I chose to call the “retreat.” The bed fit in the area between the deck and the low bookcase running between the two support columns. Since there are no other bedrooms, this house was obviously designed for a single person or couple.

There wasn’t much to the exterior; a simple stucco finish that relied more on the masses of the house than decoration to make a statement:

I showed these to my boss at the time and she was blown away that I’d do this “just for fun.” I miss those guys. Too bad the company crashed and burned…