What A Fucking Waste Of Time

This will be a short update. I have to go to bed at 10pm to be up by 5am.

Today was the first day of working in the Seattle office. There’s something pretty cool about working in a skyscraper in the big city. But the commute will be the death of me, and probably everyone who makes it. Holy shit, what a long day.

This picture is a squiggly mess taken on the way home, around 6:00pm. I thought the chaotic lights were a good representation of the day. It started at 4:00am. I woke, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed I was late. Okay. Not really. Beatles lyrics aside, the day did start at 4:00am. I met Lance at 5:15, and went to pick up another co-worker before getting on Highway 20 by 5:30am. We had to turn around to pick up Lance’s glasses, since he was driving.

The drivers of Seattle are pussies! Only in Seattle will you hear the morning traffic reports refer to a “sunshine slowdown” because these jackasses drive slower because — follow me here — the sun is shining in their eyes. Hello motherfuckers! Have you ever heard of sunglasses? And sunshine isn’t the only thing that causes people to drive like their brains are leaking out their anuses. Rain, fog, snow, and even a clear day when “the mountain is out” will cause these people to slow down. Apparently, the only way the morning commute goes off without a hitch is if it’s overcast with no chance for precipitation, and the temperature is about 50°F. In Seattle, that only happens twice a year, usually over the Fourth of July weekend.

To other commuters who may have glanced into our vehicle, we must have looked like a carpool of three fat guys on their way to an audition for The Biggest Loser. But aside from that, we made it in about two hours and ten minutes. The day at work was like any other, except for re-assembling my office in the new space. In fact, here’s a new gallery of my office in the Westin.

The Internet connection is fast as hell in the Westin! I did a speed test, and was getting over 15 megabit a second downloads and 7 megabit uploads to a server in San Jose! w00t!

The drive home was faster. We left the parking garage by 5:40pm, and I was uploading the pictures in that gallery by 7:40pm. And that included a stop at the ARCO for a pack of smokes for Tina. Let’s just hope that while the commutes are long, they are as smooth as today’s.

Today was the final day of working in the Oak Harbor office, and I was in a somewhat melancholy mood as I, um, packed my shit.

I started on Tuesday, packing non-essentials and books during lunches and breaks, and today I powered down my workstation and spent the last two and a half hours of my final day in the Oak Harbor office bundling cables and packing the remainder of my office. Beginning Monday, my days become ungodly long — 13 to 14 hours long — and I don’t like it one fucking bit. About four of us will be making the commute from Oak Harbor to Frasier‘s home town. The rest will be moving this weekend, or have moved already.

The company bought us one last six-pizza, six-liters-of-pop lunch as a celebration of an era coming to a close. The office used to be a sporting goods store, and a realtor‘s office before becoming the office of an ISP in 1998. I guess I was a little more reminiscent than most. I had been working in that log building for twelve years. Fuck, it sure doesn’t feel that long.

In 1994, I was working as a desktop publisher at a printing company in suite A-103 at Trader’s Village. I worked on Macintosh computers on the main floor, and the printing presses were in the finished basement. When I left the printing company in 1996, I started working for Galaxynet. It was only two months before they relocated the business… yes, into suite B-102 in the Trader’s Village. Galaxynet was reluctantly sold in 2001 to a milquetoast and a ball-stomping shrew (in my opinion), but I continued to work there because I really do like the job. When we expanded the business into an Internet Cafe, we relocated into a bigger space; suite B-107. In 2004, Galaxynet was sold (did I do that?) to the company I work for now, which began my work in the last suite I’ll work in, A-101. Just so I don’t forget, I took several pictures of our office. Yeah, I’m sentimental. What of it?

There’s something to be said about working in the same building for so long. You learn that it takes you seven to ten minutes to get to work, depending on how you hit the traffic lights. It’s easy to budget gasoline. You can get home on autopilot, almost without thinking about the drive. And, everyone in town knows where the log building on Midway Boulevard is in Oak Harbor. I will miss the familiarity of the building and the short drive to work.

So long, old friend. You’ve been a great, unique building to work in.