the flying squirrel

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Back in one of my co-op terms with the company I'm working for now, they had hired (or conscripted—I'm not sure of the right word) a highschool co-op to come work in HR.

As I was working in QA, I was usually pretty bored. I'm not sure how it started, but she would come up and talk to people up in R&D. I guess she was bored too. Sometimes she'd stop by my cube and say hi. We'd chat about stuff—nothing important—like how much being a co-op student sucked, or what she wanted to do when she escaped highschool. It was nice. She was nice.

I'd go down and visit her in HR sometimes too. I'm sure the ladies in HR were vaguely amused. One day one of them intercepted me on the way and told me she could use someone to talk to. I think I just nodded, my mood tempered a bit, wondering what was up.

Her great-grandmother had died. She was in tears. I did the only thing I could do, which was to sit and listen and tell her, no, she wasn't silly for getting so upset about it. My grandfather had died maybe a year earlier. I could sympathize a little. I think I sat with her for at least an hour. I hope it made her feel better.

Eventually, the term ended, hers before mine, I think. I don't know if I promised to send her email, but I never did. I saw her once after, in a car with a friend. She got her friend to honk the horn and she waved, and I waved back, after taking a second or two to figure out what was going on. I definitely had a crush on her, but the university vs. highschool thing/four or five year age difference seemed pretty insurmountable at the time. And I felt I would have held her back, somehow.

I heard her name today on the PA system in the pharmacy. Her prescription was ready. I looked around to see if I recognized her, but instead of running up and down the aisles to track her down and say hi, the urge to hunch my shoulders and walk away quietly, pretending I didn't notice, held sway. I know I'd like to see her again, but it would probably be awkward.

Friday, June 6, 2003

Interesting day. I got no work done.

Well, maybe a little. I changed maybe two lines in my feature spec document. That's about it, though.

The story of my day starts yesterday. Actually, no, it starts before that. It starts with another story.

About a year ago, one of the guys on my team (his name is John; no relation) went out to a conference. Now John was working on a Mercury TestDirector integration at the time. He went to see the Mercury booth for laughs. He came back with an action figure. The action figure's name was Captain Mercury. He came in a box and everything, emblazoned with the slogan, "This Is No Time to Fly at Half Speed!" and offered a website you could visit for a free load test. This was all lots of fun. We started calling John Captain Mercury.

A month or so ago, another team member went to a different conference. John asked if he could bring back a couple more Captain Mercurys. Unfortunately, the lady at the booth told Adam that the campaign had been discontinued. "It wasn't professional enough."

"Oh, that's too bad," said Adam. "We've got a guy in the office who works with Test Director and he really liked it. We called him Captain Mercury and everything. I was kind of hoping we could get some more for other people in the office." Down-hearted, Adam was about to walk away.

"I'll tell you what," said the Mercury lady. "We've got thousands of the things just taking up space in a warehouse. It's costing us money to have them sit there. Here's my card. Send me an email and tell me how many you want, and I'll have them shipped to you. Any you don't use, you can just give to charity."

At hearing this, Adam was overjoyed, and a plan began to form itself in his mind.

When he got back, he told John that they'd discontinued Captain Mercury and they didn't have the action figures anymore. Sad news indeed, but quickly forgotten.

Last night, coming up on 6:00, I was still at work. Adam approached my desk and said, "I need your help."

"Whatever for?" I inquired.

"I have boxes of Captain Mercurys and I need help setting them up in John's cube."

"I'm in."

After some wings at Morty's, a quick stop at the dollar store for Captain Mercury-sized motorcycles, horses, giant beetles and prom dresses, a good hour of solid work, and 54 Captain Mercurys later, our masterpiece was completed.

John came into work this morning and was overjoyed, as were we all. A good day.

After that, we had our picture taken for an internal communication thing, went out for an early lunch at the Classic Indian buffet and had to sit through a good two to three hours of marathon meetings, and otherwise got nothing done. But it was good. Now everybody has a Captain Mercury.

Monday, June 2, 2003

I went to the dentist's today and I have to go back next week. Just a little "pitting" in the left-side wisdom teeth. Nothing major. I'll have to get them drilled and filled and resealed. My dentist seems to know me as the guy he doesn't have to see very much. Before this, my last check-up was March '02. My upper wisdom tooth is a bit achy right now where he was poking around. I hope that goes away soon.

I got to meet Morag's new cat yesterday. He's a bit of a nutcase, but he's cute and seems harmless. I got him to play with me a bit, but he wasn't terribly interested otherwise. That's okay. I'm sure he has more interesting things to do with his time.

Also this weekend, my glorious new bed arrived and I spent most of Saturday (and the earliest parts of Sunday) at a LAN party. That was an interesting new experience. I've decided I don't like Tribes. I also took out my frustration with Starcraft on Dan and Brian in a rather merciless two-on-one game. I hadn't played Starcraft in ages, and I'm pretty good against the computer, but I'd never actually played against humans before. I'd lost three rounds to pretty predictable ( if I'd ever thought about it) tactics, my major failing being that I'm slow to build. The computer will patiently wait for you to build an army of unstoppable might, but people won't. Me, I like to happily churn things out at a reasonable pace, when I think it might be nice to have them. I don't like it when somebody sends a few dozen hydralisks after me. I got some small satisfaction in the end with my fleet of Protoss carriers, but I suppose, when you're up against players who hadn't even seen a Protoss carrier before, that's just a little bit mean.

My only wholly satisfying victory was in Moonbase Commander. That was mostly due to the fact that Eric (despite his fetishistic penchant for viruses) wasted too much time taking out Sam whilst I was lovingly hoarding energy.