The office move 2009

Today I moved offices. I moved across two buildings to the same building and floor I started on as a student in 1991, along with two of my friends/co-workers who also started out here as co-op students at the exact same time and place(how weird is that?). Yesterday found me furiously scrubbing my old desk and cabinets so that they'd be nice and clean for the new guy moving into my old digs. It was a good thing I did this because I found gross stuff like one of my old gel guitar fingernails (it cracked off when I went to eject a CD in my PC last year) and some old M&M's on the floor behind my UPS(they were still edible!).

I faithfully stickered all my boxes and stuff with my name and future office number, being a veteran of many office moves, I know how stuff can disappear on you. At 2:20 or so my PC disappeared (to go to the new place) and around 3:00pm, an hour before move time the head moving guy shows up with a floorplan and he's standing outside my cubicle telling me that all the office numbers written on my stuff are wrong. We've been given the old floorplan and those offices no longer exist. He gives me the new numbers. The trouble is, almost everyone has left the office now because we have no PC's and need to get out of the way for the move to take place. So I had to take the guy around to every person who was moving, get the new numbers and write it down 10 or 16 times on all of their stuff boxes, chairs, screens, cabinets, fans, garbage cans etc.. Except for Slava, who has condensed the contents of his office to two boxes which he has moved himself a few hours before. I actually did a preemptive move of some of my odder items with Slava. My huge office tree (the plant people are not going to like that I moved this, they get upset), my hockey stick and the hologram picture of the old 1920's guy who turns into a devil that kept the cleaning staff from coming anywhere near my office 2 years ago.

Today I head over to the new place and find all my boxes, but no PC's or screens. It's gonna be hard to work without these so I take a walk around the new digs looking for them. They are no where in sight. One of my co-workers, DJ, scored an office with a PMPO (Presumably Messy Previous Occupant) who didn't really clean his up for the new guy like I did. The presumably messy guy actually inherited my old office on my old floor. My buddy is unhappy about this and we can all tell. One of the AD's goes by and makes the mistake of asking him how things are going and 20 minutes later a cleaning crew arrives asking me where DJ's office is. I don't know who called them but it's funny. Apparently we aren't expected to clean our offices, this is something they do. Shit, if I'd have known that, I would have left the fingernail in mine. Still, do unto others like you'd like done to you sorta thing..

I come back from my search of the new floor and find the confused LAN guy with Slava scratching his head (the LAN guys is scratching his own head, not Slava's).
"I installed them in here yesterday!" He says. That is not good. Maybe someone has mistaken them for the previous occupant's PC's and has taken them back over to my old floor. I take a walk to my old digs two buildings over and find them after awhile in Slava's old empty office. I call the LAN guy and he says he'll come and get them and install them in the new place. The "Move Gremlins" probably did this to screw with me..

When I get back to my new office to start unpacking my boxes I see that the PMPO is over at his old digs conversing with DJ about the unsatisfactory condition he left his office in. I don't know if he's been called over or if he forgot something, but they have a brief conversation which is moot because the Cleaning crew has been through and DJ already picked all the fingernails off the floor and removed the 3 years of muffin debris between the crack in the two connecting portions of the desk.

"Well I did not clean the crack.." says the previous occupant.. This is funny for some reason. I actually cleaned MY crack.. I took a paperclip, straightened it out and ran it through there to get out the build up of crusty debris. (the fact that we could be talking about body parts is not lost on me).

Throughout the morning two people an office away have been flirting loudly non-stop for about 2 hours. At one point the guy was threatening the girl that he'd come into work wearing a speedo or something and I felt the need to poke my head around the corner and ask that they not scare us like that on our first day because we're new. Everyone giggles.. I'm making friends. I go back to DJ's office. He's mad and proclaims loudly that the previous occupants cleaning habits leave a lot to be desired (he doesn't exactly say it like that though, he uses a cuss word and the name of that animal we get bacon from). I try to shush him and remind him that we may be embedded amongst 20 of the guy's best Friends but DJ does not care at this point. He's a bit pissed and rightly so I guess..

I hook my PC up, unpack a pile of boxes and the next thing I know it's lunch. I crack a book open while I eat and notice that the flirtymates have resumed their mating ritual because it has been reasonably quiet for awhile. They must have gone away or something. I've always been able to tune stuff like that out if I want so it does not bother me in the least. As long as they change it up and don't repeat themselves too much. It goes on all lunch hour.

DJ comes in my office after lunch to discuss an issue with an application we just rolled out. He pauses while the flirty couple laugh loudly. He comments on this just as loudly. A few minutes later I urge him to come into a conference room with me so we can talk about our project as well as the flirty couple's ability to work and chat nonstop whilst not offending them too badly on our first day.

It always takes time to get used to a new place... Still, I think I'm going to like it here. I have a feeling there's a few people on this floor as weird as I am..

If the flirty couple is at it again tomorrow I'm going to go over and break the ice for them so they can go on their first date so I don't have to hear the elaborate mating ritual play out all day. I know it bugs DJ. I have a feeling he's gonna show up with his classical music collection and the biggest set of earphones money can buy tomorrow!

Difference between men and women according to my 5 year old

Women have boobies.

Men have "nibbles"





There you have it....

Akida Dogs Revisited

Someone pointed me to this great picture awhile back. It brings back memories! Where's the dog whisperer when you need him.

Dave Vader costume - Gleno School dance October 2009

I have this old Grim Reaper Costume (see pic) that's over 7 feet tall that you wear like a backpack in order to elevate the head to create the height illusion. I have done that shtick where I left it outside a few days before Halloween as a stationary prop before changing into it in my garage Halloween night and slipping back into place as the kids came up to the door (see 2007 video) . I'm not sure which is more fun, giving the kids a scare, or their parents (wait scratch that! BIG kids. They're my favorite).

This year I modified it a bit and turned it into a Darth Vader Costume. I popped an old Don Post Vader mask I had from the early 90's up on there, with a headlamp inside to cast an erie glow from the eye and mouth filters. Then I got my Replica red LED lightsaber prop that ignites and makes the lightsaber sound when swung and collision sound when struck (awesome!) , and went off to my kid's school dance.

I got dressed in the parking lot and strode inside all Vader-like. I've been there before and whatever costume I'm wearing, they all mistakenly make me out to be one of two teachers there, Mr M or Mr A. I'm not sure why they should get all the credit for my costume, but what the hey. I'll impersonate them if it's funny, short of getting them into trouble.
"No homework tomorrow kids!"...

Whenever I have a tall costume on that features a height illusion, I have found that little kids feel the need to kick and beat on me in some way to in order to prove to themselves that I am somehow not real. Kicks to the shins are to be expected, as are punches to the groin area. I don't think it's malicious as they seem to think I'm on stilts and they don't expect to connect with any vulnerable parts of my body. Luckily most parents step in and save me ( next year I'm definitely incorporating some upgraded groin protection).

This year brought an unexpected side effect. I'm carrying a glowing lightsaber in a dark gym and I'm 7 and a half feet tall. Ninjas are making a comeback this year. Star Wars Jedi and King Arther Knights are also popular costumes. There were a few Viking barbarian guys as well. The one thing these costumes all have in common?

Swords..

The one thing I overlooked was that, holding a glowing red lightsaber in a darkened gym with pulsating Katy Perry music, some of these kids might want to take a poke at the Lord of the Sith and make a name for themselves. Swords were coming at me from everywhere. Most of them could not hit the Vader Mask on top of my costume, which was good, but what they could hit was the center mass of Dave Vader, which happened to be where my face and eyeballs were.

POKE!

"ARGGGGGG!"

Slash

"Argggg! That went in my mouth!"

My wife said.
"It was your idea!"

POKE! "ARGGG! It's ok, I have two eyeballs".

The hackers and slashers were easy enough to deflect but this one Nights of the Templar kid would stand directly underneath me and he had this little white plastic broadsword which he'd thrust upwards in a straight line from underneath my arms so that I couldn't bat it away with my lightsaber.

POKE!
"Score kid, I'm going to have a black eye! Darth Vader's going to the ER now.."

I tried to force choke them all with my mind but it didn't work. I think I know how Spartacat feels now..

I'll have to re-think this costume a bit..

GAG 14 geocaching event

Dressed as Jason from Friday the 13th in a cornfield certainly brings back memories of when I was 13 years old. Seems I was always dressing up as him and jumping out of the corn on Kemp Road outside Blackburn Hamlet for as many times as I could talk my friends into taking a walk down there after dark.

The last Gag we did was on a Friday the 13th and Tripper and Kenmore wore their Jason Masks so I made sure not to forget mine this time around for GAG 14! If I'm not mistaken, this is the same one from my Voorhees geocache. They come in handy for pokey branches that want to take your eyes out. Luckily no one called the police on us this time as thy cracked their blinds just in time to see three guys dressed as Jason going into the forest.

There were some neat caches on this trip. At one point we figured out the co-ordinates for the next cache in the nice warm Van as Tripper and Kenmore were tossing a nearby garbage dumpster looking for the cache. I learned an amazing cellphone tactic to deflect spousal suspicion. Gwilliker was talking to his girlfriend on the phone (She was googling and Wikiing for us) and at one point he covered the mouthpiece and mentioned how this was going to cost him big-time. He was going to be forced to go see the movie 'Couple's Retreat' with her sometime this weekend.
We all laughed and she heard us when he uncovered the cellphone. She must have asked:
"What's so funny?" and without skipping a beat Gwilliker said:
"Oh Somebody Farted, Ok, next search.. "

Classic!

Bigfoot scare at Gold Bug

This one's a little late. Back on Tuesday October 6th I got wind that a local geocachers was going for their 1000th find on one of my geocaches because it kinda fit in with her name. It was The Gold Bug geocache which was my homage to an Edgar Allen Poe story I'd always liked..

I was a few weeks away from releasing the next Bigfoot movie so I thought I'd do a little publicity and dress up as the big hairy guy and surprise a bunch of people in the forest. Actually publicity was the last thing on my mind, I just like doing stuff like this!

I packed the suit, bungie-ed it to my trusty old toboggan (this is how I move big things around in the forest like bunny crates and bodies, etc..) threw everything in the truck and headed out with a 15 minute head start.

Being the cache-owner I knew where ground zero was, the path they would follow and the parking lot they would all start at. I parked about 2 kilometers away and hoofed it to the back-end bushwack and arrived pretty early, with about 20 minutes to get dressed and pick a good spot to stand up and be creepy in.

In the end, about 21 geocachers came walking up the hill in a big group, all with their noses stuck to their GPS's. A light raid had started to fall and it was all feeling very surreal.

Congrats to Miss bug of her 1000th find and thanks for doing it on one of my geocaches!

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 - Released!

It's OUT! Longer than the gestation period of an elephant that was! The film was released tonight in an ammo can outside my front yard where people came by and snagged copies of the film for the upcoming GAG 14 geocaching event. There's also two downloadable versions, one "bleeped" with no cuss words and the real-life talkin' version(grin). The DVD has two audio tracks that you can switch between.

This is just a basic version with the feature. Now I'm going to go over the footage and make a "Making of" and blooper reel as well as a "director's commentary" and all that fun stuff. Maybe even a pop up video version!

For now here's the two downloadable versions

1. A downloadable link to a 551MB censored copy TPGMBF2-bleeps.wmv

2. A downloadable link to a 551MB UN-censored copy (bad words you can't say on television, and all that). TPGMBF2-badwords.wmv(coming soon! should be active by 1:00pm Thursday oct 15th)

Check it out! And if you're even in Ottawa, stop by the cache, it's in a really cool location!

A big thanks to:

Ndg8r......................... as himself
Kirok..........................Mike Gariepy
Zartimus................David Carriere
GRizzlyG..................as himself
Tripper......................as himself
Captain Hook.......Andrew Basque
Mr Lifto.................Paul Wyndands
GWilliker.............Bryce Crossman
Cliffy.........................Andrew Bush
Nate the gopher...............as himself