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2004-01-30 - 10:26 a.m. Naked Cherubs would liven things up What would happen if you went to a meeting and nobody was there? Yesterday, I went to a 9:30 meeting only to find out that it had been moved until 1 pm. But, Mike�s office was empty. Clean desk, empty, handy wireless Internet � and no one from my team knew where I was. Bliss. Except Mike�s office is next to all the senior project engineers, who passed by the door, paused for a double take. You�re not Mike. I want to be like Mike. Pause for confusion of Theo using a sports joke. (Hey, I only realized in the past two weeks that the Carolina Panthers were a professional football team. I thought they were college. Don�t beat me, Colin.) Ah, but now it entered their consciousness that I was handy for all those questions, so interruptions became more frequent. Dave�s third trip through was, unfortunately for him, just as I opened the Gen�s link to Harmonia Marcocosmica, Andreas Cellarius, 1661 atlas of the heavens. Try this at home. You can pretty effectively forestall anyone�s questions by saying Look! Naked cherubs. I wonder if that�s more or less effective around Valentine�s Day? We turned the computer screen over and over trying to infer the Latin translation from our knowledge of romance languages and Tycho Brae�s equations. We flattered ourselves we were succeeding for about two minutes. The rest of the folio page led to a debate on the orders of angels, cherub to seraphim, which class had how many wings and why did the seraphim seem to have breasts. Unfortunately, the senior engineer on the program crossed the threshold at this point just in time for Dave to turn and say Look, naked cherubs. It works just as well the second time. Don�t you think, I said, gesturing between the web browser and the pile of documents I was hastily reading for the afternoon requirements review, we�d get more people happily participating in document reviews if the marginalia featured dancing cherubs? Our senior engineer had the sense to leave muttering I don�t even want to know. Yeah, he�s gotten to know me pretty well in the past year. So, the meeting happened, and again I will thank God for wireless internet. We use this online document review tool, and it�s much easier to flip through the website than to shuffle the piles of printouts my management staff was using. (Oh, a shout out to Corbie for this bit. My project manager eventually broke down and asked one of the �Apple� folks to oblige him by pulling up the reference material. Six laptops, four apples to two Dells, and none of the PC users had Wireless.) Hour one. I email my hardware team and get the instant response needed to cut off a ten minute argument and say My hardware lead confirms they�ve sealed that unit and helium contamination isn�t a problem. My colleague, who inadvertently incited the entire discussion, leans over and drawls Slick. Hour two. Mike (who had finally returned to find me in his office), across the table with his Mac, accidentally trips the Fun for engineers link (which I currently can�t find) I forwarded from Corbie, creating an immense zapping noise as the movie plays showing electrical arcing across an entire power line. Mike spends hours of his life worrying about the tiny electrical arcs spacecraft constantly experience as the move at Mach 7 through space, creating electricity as they move through the charged particles of orbit. It was funny to Mike and I. Not quite effective as Look! Naked cherubs. but it did stun the room to silence for half a minute. Hour three. Passionate arguments about the fifth document under review distill down to: I don�t want to baseline this. It�s not right. We still have a month�s worth of details to run down. But you have to put something down so we can either get people to sign up or tell us what they really need. We�ll never get done otherwise. It�s like the comedian says Well, do you have a flag? I hang my head in my hands, groaning. I�m sorry, but the meeting is over. We�ve devolved to quoting Eddie Izzard. Very good! I�m impressed anyone got that. Are you kidding? I saw his last show. I still lust after his boots. I stop, surveying the room full of confused looks and thinking the naked cherubs have probably pushed things far enough today. Explaining the comedy of an executive transvestite would probably not win any professional kudos. This really doesn�t happen at anyone else�s workplace, does it? Roland is still in Japan, on the other side of the international dateline, spending his Saturday wandering about Tokyo. Me? I�m working a few hours from home before packing my fellow Puffs into the truck for the trip to Ice Castles/Black Diamond�s 20th anniversary/a lot of people I haven�t seen in years are turning up. Gotta go pack my blender and my Silver Chalice. �� remember your time in the mountains. For we will revel together again, in time and place yet unknown.� P.S. for bookgirl - Janet Fraiser? Not Samantha Carter the geeky one? Of course, Janet is more the argumentative type. I totally get Genvieve at Jolinar. Hey, I need to order Season 5! � � Scribble to Theo previous - next �