Reading https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/it-came-from-the-server-room-halloween-tales-of-tech-terror.1259761/ due to reasons, and reflecting on the only time I've been involved with an electronics room Having a Moment. It was when I was a temp up in the big city, naturally, and I only vaguely remember that it happened. So I searched back through the household chat to see if I documented any of it at the time.

You, Nov 5, 2018, 4:56 PM
I will definitely be later than planned; the Telecom room overheated and then the investor tour is now 25 minutes late and counting.

You, Nov 5, 2018, 5:29 PM
Leaving work now.

You, Nov 5, 2018, 5:44 PM
Safely train. Guessing I will arrive at [location] at 6:55.

You, Nov 5, 2018, 5:50 PM
They are now rebooting the train.

Basically I had to check the temperatures in the two telecom rooms a couple times a day, and there was a whole procedure for the steps to take if something was not right. I was not quite leaving for the day, because I still had to be present to walk some kind of people who make money by having money through the space, but I was getting things done before I had to do that and had to leave. And the room was too hot and getting hotter. So I would have called my supervisor and started taking steps to cool the room down. I assume that someone else took over the computer cooling situation (probably by calling the air conditioner repair people) once I'd done all I could. I have a vague memory of a pedestal fan, and being the one to locate both the extension cord and the power outlet, as we had a new manager who didn't know my location well yet.

I still made it to the station within about 5 minutes of when I predicted I would, so that was nice.

In the search for any other commentary from then, I found a Contentious Thread over in someone else's journal, where there was a situation where empathy was called for but someone in particular was using troubleshooting, and with the knowledge and consent of the journal owner, I pointed this out and said some words that sometimes precede calling for one's seconds. Funnily enough, the next person who would eventually also get disinvited from that space noticed that "people" were getting "attacked" for being 'helpful' and did a passive aggression about it.

Also, the problem with it being bedtime but not yet being in bed means that the meds that are supposed to make me sleepy, I haven't taken yet, and therefore they have not perhaps kicked in, and it is after 4 in the morning now... Oops.

We have moved nearly every zig worth zagging.

I work for the Borg. Well, if not the Borg, a Borg. Big tech yadda yadda. They weren't born in Seattle, but based on trends it looks like they're trying to establish a foothold.

Before September there were like 5 locations across a few blocks in Seattle. That got narrowed down to three: same or bigger staff count, more space in fewer buildings. After today, it will be two, same routine.

It's my location closing. I have emotions.

Morning started with a good solid yell about the big screen in the fish bowl room. It was large and on the wall and nobody quite knew what it would take to get it moved. Between me, Bosslady, and the visiting end user support dude Q, we figured some of that out.

Interspersed that was some fucking around with stuff downstairs. One of the local dudes, whose face reminds me a bit of the "Children! Stop eating bees!" doggos, had a smol in tow. She didn't need markers and paper, she had a phone and pink kitty headphones. They got stuff done with a minimum of wrestling with the network.

In the end, it took 5 people to get the 75" display off the wall: 3 to hold it, 1 to unplug stuff, and 1 to find the screwdriver to loosen the outrageously tight monitor cable. (Two engineers, desktop support, and two Facilities. Though usually bystanders sort me into the engineers.)

The 70s exploded in the downstairs. So much funky furniture arrived overnight. It was staged so Mr. Oregon could have his movers stop in one place.

I made a box called Move Day Essentials. Mr. Oregon came up to ask me if I had any Sharpies. I pointed him to the box. Yup.

I packed up my reception desk.

They were still going strong by the time I had to run and catch my train.

Monday will be wild. I'm at the new building for a week.

Word printed out too many labels, but that was okay.

Me two weeks ago: "Technicians will be performing a routine 5-year safety test of the elevators. ... This is not expected to cause an audible disturbance inside [Borg] space."

Me today: "Soooooo... it turns out that it does 'cause an audible disturbance' because they load the elevators up with bricks and then drop them."

My people prairie-dogged to see what was going on.

Health: my sleep schedule has been pretty stable, which is a cornerstone of how I'm doing in general. There are things we are keeping an eye on, as well as an active "Huh, that's weird." I am gradually getting a little more of my attention span back from work and commute.

Work: my contract runs until the end of the year. The lease on the building that I'm reception for runs out sometime next year. This iteration of the Borg are currently in the "let's all sit in the same Cube" phase of their plans.

Car: much of the savings was wiped out by emergency crowns. I am talking to one of the guys who might be able to get me hooked up with a beater to at least make me mobile while I save for something better.

Kid: still settling in to the nice software job in SoCal. She bounced her birth mom's car off a freeway barrier, rolled it, and was MRI-ed before walking away basically unhurt. The car was a loss. Her parents are making the process of getting another car into a painful dramathon, and it's going to obliterate a chunk of her savings. My gratitude at her safety is overruling some of my other parental feelings.

Relationship: still with dearest partner, and it does continue to be like a sleepover with a BFF. Except with more chores. My morail continues excellent, and is planning to visit in a few months.

Household: massive work to be done on basement. Recently the bathtub was re-caulked, which should stop the basement ceiling leak. The washer broke an agitator fin; partner bought a replacement. This past weekend we demolished a basement closet so the workers can get the moat installed. It was mostly my partner swinging the sledgehammer and me unloading the bar. Once it's all done, the bar's getting moved, and I will get to set up Sewzb0t on the actual sewing machine table. Whee!

Clothes: I have discovered inexpensive black scrubs skirts. A little bit goth, a little bit punk in that I am re-purposing a thing. I should probably wear the black lipstick more, and refresh the blue hair dye.

I am a mighty huntress, and have proudly deposited a catch in front of my surprised monkey. Mew.

Or, in slightly less metaphorical terms, while my closest work friend was busy getting laid off (alas, but morale is good), one of the companies downstairs from my floor was also frantically preparing for departure. They had a number of things to offload if possible (fewer things to pay to have hauled away), including a microwave, a fancy coffee brewer, monitors, mini-fridge, and large gong. (I think it's a sales department thing. There was one at GoDaddy.)

When my beloved's abusive and also petty shitwad ex left, there was an agreement that they could take the bar fridge. They didn't, however, *have* to leave the contents of that fridge on top of the bar in the mid-June heat. But they did.

Belovedest has had their eye out since then, with the intent of making the basement a hospitable and habitable place, instead of the hoarder hell of craft supplies it once was. Every now and then one of us goes poking. I keep looking at prices. On Sunday there were some at Costco, $10 off the usual (which was itself pretty reasonable). The sale ran through next weekend, so there was time to think about it.


The fridge here was available for the low low price of free.


I showed up on the indicated floor with a cart. I indicated my interest in the fridge and some monitors. The fridge was larger than the one I had been looking at. Score. (I revised my thoughts: fold down back seat.) I got to inherit the contents of the fridge as well: beer, sparkling water, condiments, a small glacier. I sorted through those. Neither one of us likes beer, and the rest also seemed more suited to leave at work. (Work started out as a Silly Valley tech company, so there are beer bashes. Work has matured, so they're tipping towards wine, cheese, and delivery from one of Seattle's many good food places, and some folks skip the wine. But there's still beer on offer.)

I stuffed the thing discreetly in an otherwise locked room.

What day this week can you pick up the mini fridge from Seattle?

Mon 11:09 AM

Btw claimed a mini fridge

Mon 11:09 AM

We worked out details, and agreed that the best thing was to pick it up after they got out of work Tuesday. (I wanted to severely limit the amount of time it was taking up space at work.) I packed a change of clothes, and after work yesterday I loaded the thing back on the cart and took my evening shower in the building's little gym.

We got it loaded up, then we went to take the cart back and haul in the vinegar for descaling the hell out of the old coffee brewer. Of course, the garage elevator is exit-only at that hour. Taking the stairs was not our wisest choice. But we got down into the lobby safely. The interior elevator was still running, of course. I showed my partner the view from the office, my desk, the conference room I'd named.

It's Seattle, so parking for even that short a time had a price. But as fridge prices go, parking and gas is still daaaaang cheap.

We drove home to the sound of Symphony Sanders cracking up over a Tingler.

My partner got the fridge in a workable place.

Partner: [swearing at surge protector] *mutter mutter mutter NAIL mutter mutter*
Me: ... I'll go grab the bag of hammers.
Partner: ... ...
Partner: Of *course* it's a bag of hammers.
Me, brightly: Where else would I keep them?

The fridge was situated. They have a bar fridge again. We left it with some soda to think about. Hooray.

This morning (after all the other commotion involved in getting to work) I was going peacefully about my slightly fraught Tuesday morning inventory of all the kitchen items (food and food-related supplies) so I could get the weekly orders sent off before the 10am deadline.

Just after 9am, the curly-haired brunette manager-type asked me if I had encountered "the weird guy" and wanted to make sure that I was safe. She'd been on the elevator with another woman, and a visibly/audibly angry man. She'd already swiped her badge and punched our floor (some floors, ours included, are card-access-only, after "the Incident") but she was sufficiently uncomfortable being alone on the elevator with this guy (who had not selected a floor) that she got off at the earlier floor that the other woman had selected. This did mean that the elevator went all the way up to our floor with the guy on board, unless he'd selected a floor after everyone else got off.

It was the hope that he'd just gone back down to the lobby, and since I didn't see anyone completely unexpected (there were a few visitors from offsite, so I didn't recognize everyone) and nobody else complained, he probably did.

I've requested a copy of the incident report that building security made, since company facilities are also likely to want records of this.

I've had to explain a few times now that I have a hobby of picking up and swinging around large men, and that makes me harder to intimidate than some other people of my general body form-factor. (And The Wall was a revelation to me when I first heard of her. Someone who consorts with supers, whose powers are hyper-competent bureaucracy and standing there like a fucking wall? YES PLEASE.)

I am still alive! Work is delighting me (it's the stuff I do naturally, except with details and guidelines) but there's a lot to learn and sometimes my brain gets full. Fortunately, they are a great believer in lists, and since the list tool is shared, I don't have to prepare reports full of Things I Have Done.

There was a dishwasher incident: a clogged drain led to so much spraying around with the sink, out of the air gap fixture. Fortunately, this was a thing I'd encountered before, so I knew pretty much what to do, just not exactly who to report it to. So I emailed everybody (building management and my chain of command) and those were the correct people. It was handled in a jiffy or three, and I got to practice my graphical skills in making a "please don't dump your mac and cheese down the drain" sign. Stuff like the dishwasher incident energizes me in the moment, rather than exhausts me, but I do get drained afterwards.

The commute is pretty gnarly, but since I am taking the bus rather than driving, it could be worse. The last few miles between the express bus and home are the worst bits; at the times I'm connecting, the close bus is pretty much hourly. Fortunately, my partner's and my schedules align well enough that they can drop me off and usually pick me up.

This does mean I'm leaving home around 6am. Thanks to the current meds lineup, this is possible, rather than bitterly laughable. And the express bus is an hour of mostly dark and quiet, so I can snooze or at least chillax a bit.

I am getting to know the people there, and was invited to join the engineering contingent at the lunch table. That conversation reassured me that while they may not be fully up on the latest best practices in gender relations in the workplace, they're basically on the right side of history. This is a relief that I didn't realize that I was holding my breath for.


In other news, the kitten has decided that the kitchen counter (and the stove!) are places where she should totally be walking, and she licks the sink and tries to help washing dishes. Cats.