John Burridge

Whew!  We survived the weekend heat dome.  I'm very thankful we were able to keep the house cool.  It's heat like this that makes me glad that I can run a fountain for the bees and birds.  I saw one parched looking hummingbird taking a rest with its beak held wide open and was glad it was able to get a drink.   Usually, they just land on top of the basalt column and take a sip; this one was hovering next to the column and drinking the overflowing water.  It's possible the water was too hot for a full on bird bath:  it was warm to the touch coming out until I renewed the basin's reservoir from the garden hose. 

The dog handled the heat fairly well, but the cats objected to be cooped up inside during the day.  We let them outside at night, once the pavement had cooled off.   On the up side, being forced to share space with the dog (who really just wants to lick them and say "hi" dog-style), seems to have made the cats slightly more tolerant of the dog.  They've gone from "OMG! A dog! We're gonna die!" to "Such a shame she wandered / into our enclosure ...."

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I went into work the other day; the office is still mostly working remotely, but I'm finding that I need to start transitioning into physically going in.  Even for summer term, campus is still sparsely populated.  My office Windows machine hasn't been updated in a while, and I think it took something like three hours for it to download version upgrades.  Part of the length of the upgrade may be due to the machine's age; it's easily from 2012.  It won't be able to handle the Windows 11 release (I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing).

My co-workers also came in for work, and we took a lunch break together.  I always forget that I'm kind of tall because everyone's the same height on Zoom.  It was nice to visit with folks who I've only met virtually since my hiring last year.  It was also weird to be physically present... and working on different machines than my personal machine at home took a little getting used to (I'm not a huge fan of web-based MS Office, and this summer I'm going to have to get MS Office on various machines running the same version).

Today I went into the office for work.  The last time I went was... you know, I'm not sure—I think it must have been something like last September.  In any case, I was meeting up with a co-worker, who I haven't seen in person since years and years; we were working for separate departments before being blended into our current office.  We were hired remotely.  Our supervisor retired on our first full day on the first of July.  We were meeting up to meet a potential new supervisor.  In person.

I haven't met most of my supervisors and co-workers except in Zoom or over Teams.  Like most of the US, I've been working from my bedroom, dressed in in jeans, slippers, and casual shirts.  The result is that most of the rest of the staff feel a little abstract and unreal.  

Today I shaved, put on slacks, some dress shoes, and a jacket.  I drove to work and found a parking spot on campus, which felt particularly empty because it's the end of the Spring Term.  I walked to the building I've only worked in for maybe a total of six hours over the last year of working remotely.  My co-worker was there ahead of me: I saw her standing near the elevator, slightly turned away from me.  I didn't recognize her at first because she was wearing a mask, I was seeing her from behind instead of in a Zoom frame, and she had legs.  

She must have recognized my voice as I was checking into the building because she turned and said, "John?  I thought that was you.  You're still tall."

I was having some adjustments to seeing her in real life—the only time I've seen her walking, she's appeared to be standing still, with slight swaying, as her apartment moved behind her.  Seeing her move while the building stood still was different.  Later, we met up with another supervisor: the timbre of his voice had made me imagine him shorter than he is in real life.   When he and my co-worker were speaking and trading some contact information for the candidate, there wasn't text in the chat area, and I could see the backs of their shoulders.  

For a moment, I thought I wouldn't remember my desktop's password, but luckily, my fingers did most of the remembering for my brain.  There were a lot of updates to install.  I think that's going to be the metaphor for returning to work.

I work at the University of Oregon.  Parking is luck of the draw here; drivers have a choice of paying lots of money for a reserved stall in a lot, or paying lots of money for a "hunting license" that comes with the privilege of circling through lots trying to find an empty stall.  Usually, the empty stall is sandwiched between two SUVs that are barely able to fit within the stall boundaries.  The signal to parking staff that you shouldn't be towed is a plastic dangling permit one hangs from the car's rear view window.

I think this year's parking permit should come with a brown privacy wrapper. pic.twitter.com/WXRDfjzj93

— John Burridge (@JBurridge) September 28, 2016

There's nothing like a power outage to underscore how much of my job (and my writing) is dependant on electricity. This morning, a little after 10, the lights in my office flickered, then went out. The room became still; KWAX had been playing softly, but it cut out.

As usual when the power goes out, my first question is, "When will it come back on?" This is invariably followed by James (author of "Connections") Burke's voice intoning, "Most modern people assume that the power will come back on--it never occurs to them that it might not."

I work in a brick former-men's dormitory building that was built in the 1920's. It has plenty of opportunities for daylight. Except for the basement. And the elevators. My boss and I went and started orderly shutdowns of machines that were still on and unplugged the ones that weren't. Occasionally, the lights would flicker as if the power wanted to come back on, but couldn't.

Unpowered buildings are still. Without electricity, the flourescent lights don't hum, the monitors' high-pitched whine cease, and all the computer fans stop. It's like having your ears pop while climbing a mountain -- the pressure of that unnoticed noise suddenly lets up. Suddenly, the green EXIT lights, running on emergency backup, seem loud.

We checked the elevators to listen for any sounds of someone trapped within; its buttons flicked on for a second, then died. We didn't hear anyone when we tapped on the doors. A bunch of us checked the basement. Sometimes researchers run experiments down there, and I can imagine it wouldn't be fun for a subject when the lights went out. We didn't find anyone, but we did find a power panel beeping lightly at us. If you ever want to feel like a Red Shirt, fan out from the rest of the search party in the abandoned basement of an unpowered building with a red panel beeping at you. The reading lens with built-in LED I was using as a flashlight threw just enough light to put the surrounding darkness into intimidating relief.

Back on the first floor, I went outside to see what was going on. I heard sirens in the distance. When I asked a passer-by what she knew, she said she thought there had been an explosion near the health center, and then pointed out that the sport center across the street from where we were standing was bright with electric lights. I peered the other way to the EMU and saw it was powered as well.

About this time, I realized I wasn't getting some of the status alerts the university puts out via cell phones.

http://status.uoregon.edu

The rest of the day was spent unplugging various pieces of equipment so that their power supplies wouldn't get fried if the power came back on in an uncontrolled way and then sending out e-mail (thank goodness there was a UO wireless in the nearby EMU) to the department about the status of the building.

Probably the most intimidating moment was leaning over a beeping UPS to silence it and wondering if it's flashing "overload" light meant it was going to explode and shower me with molten lead from its battery. Then there were some odd moments in very dark hallways made more dark by closed fire doors. And wondering if the steam tunnel valves really did fail open and if the water valve in the stairwell I was using would burst, shooting the wheel valve into me as I walked by. These "what if" moments usually have Tim Powers' voice attached to them.

http://dailyemerald.com/2013/01/07/university-reports-emergency-incident-at-health-center/

http://www.kval.com/news/local/Emergency-crews-evacuate-UO-health-center-185904912.html